That’s what Jen Psaki, a CNN political commentator says.
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The silly talk (and bias) is getting sillier and sillier.
Here’s the backstory…
At a campaign rally this week, President Trump was pitching the need for voters to show a photo ID.
To illustrate the point, he rattled off a list of places that require IDs: airports, bars, gun shops … and he slipped in: grocery stores.
Obviously out of touch says CNN’s Psaki. Source
Hmmm.
Let’s drill down on that, Jen.
Here’s what you need to know …
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Last might, around 10 p.m., AG Sessions issued a press release indicating that Andrew McCabe was being fired.
Here’s Session’s statement (with my emphasis added):
After an extensive and fair investigation and according to Department of Justice procedure, the Department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) provided its report on allegations of misconduct by Andrew McCabe to the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR).
The FBI’s OPR then reviewed the report and underlying documents and issued a disciplinary proposal recommending the dismissal of Mr. McCabe. Both the OIG and FBI OPR reports concluded that Mr. McCabe had made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor − including under oath − on multiple occasions.
The FBI expects every employee to adhere to the highest standards of honesty, integrity, and accountability. As the OPR proposal stated, ‘all FBI employees know that lacking candor under oath results in dismissal and that our integrity is our brand.’
Pursuant to Department Order 1202, and based on the report of the Inspector General, the findings of the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility, and the recommendation of the Department’s senior career official, I have terminated the employment of Andrew McCabe effective immediately.
The key points:
1) Inspector General Horowitz – applauded by all (before last nite) as a straight arrow – found that McCabe committed serious transgressions.
2) The IG forwarded some of his conclusions to the OPR – an internal watchdog group with a reputation for cutting transgressors a lot of slack.
3) The OPR recommended to AG Sessions that McCabe be fired for his transgressions.
4) Sessions – acting on the OPR’s recommendation – fired McCabe.
Note: It was the OPR that recommended that Sessions recuse himself from the Russia probe.
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I flipped between Fox ,CNN and online news sites when the announcement came down.
Talk about different worlds and different views …
A couple of headlines tell the story:
CNN goes from the sublime to the ridiculous.
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MSM reporting has had a bad couple of weeks …
Off the top of my head:
Now, CNN has gone from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Yesterday, a mere hour after the Port Authority bombing, CNN started headlining another breaking news story.
Source: TownHall.com
Note that the times on the 2 screen shoots are identical … then glance at the headlines.
Fox was still on the bombing story.
CNN, not so much.
They were reporting leaked information that President Trump drinks up 12 Diet Cokes every day … and, on the campaign trail, would often down a couple of Big Macs every day.
They failed to present some exculpatory evidence: To keep his svelte physique, Trump doesn’t eat the Big Mac’s buns.
You just can’t make this stuff up …
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Press scrambling to find negative angles.
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Let’s cut to the chase …
This is all that people will remember about President Trump’s speech last night.
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Even Van Jones – former Obama Czar of Something and now a far-left CNN commentator – conceded:
Here’s the essence of Jones’s musings as reported in the Washington Post …:
That was one of the most extraordinary moments you have ever seen in American politics, period. And he did something extraordinary.
And for people who have been hoping that he would become unifying, hoping that he might find some way to become presidential, they should be happy with that moment.
For people who have been hoping that maybe he would remain a divisive cartoon, which he often finds a way to do, they should begin to become a little bit worried tonight, because that thing you just saw him do, if he finds a way to do that over and over again, he’s going to be there for eight years.
He did something tonight that you cannot take away from him.
He became president of the United States.
With that as a starting point, the media has a challenge on its hands … how to do some reverse alchemy and turn the gold back into straw?
Your answer says a lot about you.
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Before you look at the chart below, jot down the channels/shows or web pages that you trust as your primary sources for news.
No cheating.
Done?
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OK, now check where your news sources fall along this ideological continuum crafted by Pew Research.
Your news sources align with your political ideology, right?
It’s a psychological dynamic called “confirmation bias” … soliciting and internalizing information that is consistent with one’s current beliefs.
Said differently, confirmation bias is a natural stress-reduction tendency to avoid or resist any information that is contrary to or inconsistent with one’s current thinking.
One of the major solidifiers of our current political polarization is the “echo chamber effect” … we all tend to consult sources and hang with people who share, reinforce and exaggerate our ideological leanings.
So what to do?
Maybe folks should consider the source.
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Big frenzy these days about fake news.
Though Facebook CEO Zuckerberg says that less than 1% of news postings are fake, the company is setting up a special truth-checking squad.
I find that interesting in a couple of respects.
First, getting one’s news via Facebook.
Really?
I find that scary.
But, not surprising since The WaPo reports a recent poll that “more than one in 10 young adults (ages 18-29) say they rely on “The Daily Show” or its now-departed spinoff, “The Colbert Report” for news about what’s going on in the world.”
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Pew Research reports similar findings … right around 10%.
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This raises as obvious questions …
Your answer says a lot about you.
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Before you look at the chart below, jot down the 3 or 4 web pages or channels/shows that you trust as your primary sources for news.
No cheating.
Done?
=====
OK, now check where your news sources fall along this ideological continuum crafted by Pew Research.
Your news sources align with your political ideology, right?
It’s a psychological dynamic called “confirmation bias” … soliciting and internalizing information that is consistent with one’s current beliefs.
Said differently, confirmation bias is a natural stress-reduction tendency to avoid or resist any information that is contrary to or inconsistent with one’s current thinking.
One of the major solidifiers of our current political polarization is the “echo chamber effect” … we all tend to consult sources and hang with people who share, reinforce and exaggerate our ideological leanings.
So what to do?
This isn’t exactly new news , but for those who cling to belief that CNN is an unbiased source of news …
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Speaking of Hillary Clinton’s campaign –- specifically her fund-raising from fat cats – CNN anchor Chris Cuomo (son of NY Governor Andrew Cuomo) blurted out the usually veiled truth:
We couldn’t help her any more than we have.
She’s got just a free ride so far from the media.
We’re the biggest ones promoting her campaign.
So, it had better happen.
As Gomer Pyle would say:
Surprise, surprise, surprise.
The media bias may not be new news, but the explicit admission by one of the players sure is.
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Watch it for yourself.
The clip is less than a minute … Cuomo starts about 25 seconds in.
Click to view video
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The terrorist murders in California last week were a horrendous tragedy.
Can you imagine being one of the family or friends of the innocent victims?
For me, it evokes the feelings I had when attending the funeral wake of one of my former students who was killed on 9-11.
I will never forget the look on his mother’s face as she tried to stay strong while standing in front of her dear son’s coffin.
That scene permanently framed my reaction to terrorists and their cold-blooded murderous actions.
With that as a backdrop, I was stunned by some of the outrageous (and dumb) things that were said following the killings ….
My view: the debate debacle was career-limiting for the moderators, a serious blow to CNBC’s brand image and competitive standing, and a financial hit to NBC.
There seems to be a broad consensus across the political spectrum that the CNBC debate was a disaster.
Even a leaked internal CNBC email called it a train wreck.
NBC execs admonished “news” folks at NBS, MSNBC and CNBC not to “pile on”.
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Let’s do a quick damage assessment …
According to a new Gallup poll, not many people … less than 1 in 4
That’s down from 46% in 1993 … twenty years ago.
Old folks (30%) cut the most slack; college educated folks (15%) cut the least.
Not surprising, liberals (26%) trust TV news more than conservatives (18%)
All of which leads to a bigger question: if folks don’t trust government, corporations, media … what’s left?
Who to trust?
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Interesting tidbit from Pew …
OK, Fox leans right … 46% of its Obama coverage is negative …
… but, 71% of MSNBC’s coverage of Romney is negative.
Pew says that “These skews made MSNBC & Fox unusual among channels or outlets that identified themselves as news organizations.”
What people watch is – in my opinion – an indicator of their preferences … since folks tend to read & watch stuff that is consistent with their beliefs.
And, the numbers of people watching is a rough indicator of intensity – how many folks are on the wavelength.
So, let’s look at recent cable news ratings …
Fox primetime averages about 3.5 million viewers … MSNBC about 1.5 … and CNN under 750k.
Note that Stewart & Colbert get categorized as news shows (which still makes me scratch my head) … outdraws MSNBC and creams CNN.
Fox drawing more than double MSNBC has got to be good news for Romney … Comedy Central’s draw must be good news for Obama.
My prediction: Candi Crowley’s debate performance – interjecting herself into the Benghazi challenge, interrupting Mitt 26 times, giving Obama 9% more air time – will hurt her credibility as a newsperson and certainly won’t help CNN’s constant claim of being an unbiased source of news. That network’s slide will continue.
Reprinted from Drudge
The below chart — jacked from Drudge – caught my for a couple of reasons:
A couple of things trouble me …
Though I’m a Fox fan, it’s sad to see CNN tank. I think they tend to have the best analyst panels and the most mature discussions. It’s too bad that they surrendered their neutrality. Veering left of center has, in my opinion, cost them.
Drudge probably has the networks properly categorized. The fact that a big swath of folks get their news from Comedy Central can’t be good.
All of the numbers – even O’Reilly – are miniscule as a percentage of total adult population. That suggests that the vast majority people who get news – get it from the major networks via their local channels. Since, for example, the networks haven’t been covering the Libyan terrorist attack cover-up, that’s problematic.
Oh well ..
According to Reuters …
Microsoft is pulling out of the joint venture that owned MSNBC.com, freeing the world’s largest software maker to build its own online news service.
The online divorce stemmed from the two partners’ desire to gain greater control over their digital destinies as the Internet becomes an increasingly important part of their businesses.
Microsoft, in particular, had grown frustrated by contract terms requiring it to exclusively feature MSNBC.com content aimed at an audience with a liberal viewpoint.
The strategy fed a perception that material from MSNBC’s website was politically slanted, too.
“Being limited to MSNBC.com content was problematic to us because we couldn’t have the multiple news sources and the multiple perspectives that our users were telling us that they wanted,”
Anybody remember Air America — Al Gore’s liberal radio network?
Hmmm.
The mainstream media had a field day on Monday when Rep. Michele Bachmann kicked off her presidential campaign on Monday in Waterloo, Iowa, and in one interview surrounding the official event she promised to mimic the spirit of Waterloo’s own John Wayne.
How stupid can she be?
Everybody knows that John Wayne grew up in Winterset, Iowa … not Waterloo.
According to various sources, Waterloo is where his parents met and married, not where The Duke was raised. He grew up in another Iowa town.
How could anybody with a brain get the facts so wrong?
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Now let’s compare that to a gaffe that was largely buried by the mainstream media.
Visiting troops at Fort Drum last week, President Obama confused two of his Medal of Honor recipients, referring to one of the soldiers’ comrades who was killed in combat in Afghanistan as being alive.
Speaking to the 10th Mountain Division Obama reflected on the time he spent with members of the Division.
“First time I saw the 10th Mountain Division, you guys were in southern Iraq. When I went back to visit Afghanistan, you guys were the first ones there. I had the great honor of seeing some of you because a comrade of yours, Jared Monti, was the first person who I was able to award the Medal of Honor to who actually came back and wasn’t receiving it posthumously,”
The mainstream media’s explanation: the President simply misspoke.
To put the gaffe in perspective: the Medal of Honor is the highest award in the country, and Obama has only bestowed 6 Medals of Honor.
I guess even a genius can get confused when he’s trying to remember 6 award winners and trying to keep his place on the teleprompter.
Imagine if Bachman (or Bush) had made that mistake …
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