Category Archives: Media

UPDATE II: The Meta Deal On The Monster Twister & The Media (BBC Headline News, In Case CNN’s Interested)

Britain, Critique, Iraq, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media

A “monster tornado” has hit Oklahoma City suburbs causing great misery but, oddly enough, serving media purposes. From blatantly ignoring the stories of the day, as CNN has been doing for the past few days, media outlets like it can comfortably shift into pictorial mode.

Wall-to-wall coverage of a natural disaster (or massacre or crime)—and of every related utterance on the issue since, official or other—quickly replaces the imperative to provide viewers with “newsworthy material.”

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UPDATE I: The Headlines, In Case CNN’s Interested. Here are some of the headlines you should have been informed about but were not:

* The Gitmo hunger strike.

* At least 95 dead, dozens wounded in Iraq bombings.

CNN has retreated like a tortoise in its shell from the AP and IRS stories, telling you only what you need to know: “Most of you still like Obama.”

Here are the disgraceful CNN’s headlines for the day:

THE LATEST:

The Doors’ Ray Manzarek dies
Teen featured in viral video dies
Hear his goodbye song Hear his goodbye song
Senators: Apple ducks billions in taxes
Most of you still like Obama
IRS controversy: New details emerge
Yahoo buys Tumblr; what to know
Dallas firefighter gets trapped, dies
N. Korea keeps firing stuff, but what?
Hot air balloons collide in Turkey Hot air balloons collide in Turkey
Christie takes heat for role in tourism ad
Mourinho leaving Real Madrid

UPDATE II: BBC NEWS HEADLINES. CNN no longer seems to offer a half-hour headlines broadcast, the way it once did. BBC News, on the other hand, does. This succinct but comprehensive report of the facts on the ground is so much better at getting “the story” out, than freezing the frame on one event, almost statically, as our cable and news networks seem to do.

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WorldNetDaily’s 1997 Lawsuit Exposed The IRS’s Targeted Audits

Journalism, Media, Old Right, Paleoconservatism, Taxation, The State

A libertarian journalist once called him “ornery.” The truth is that Joseph Farah is a fearless and visionary newsman (he has published this writer uncensored for over a decade). I was reminded of the qualities that have made WND a media powerhouse, as I listened to the Mark Levin Show in my GTI, en route to a run.

Brian Sussman was filling in for Levin. Twice did Sussman excerpt this WND news item dated April 30, 1999. Sussman went on to laud Joseph Farah’s Western Journalism Center (a parent company of WorldNetDaily) for presaging the flaccid mainstream, to proceed boldly against the Internal Revenue Service, as early as 1997.

The IRS had “infringed [the journalists’] First and Fourth Amendment rights during the 1996 audit. The journalists further alleg[ed] that the audit was politically motivated and quot[ed] the IRS agent who was directing the audit, Thomas Cederquist, who said that the audit was a ‘political case’ and that ‘the decisions were being made at the national level.’”

There is nothing new about what the BHO-directed agency of thieves is doing these days.

Posted by Sussman, the article is entitled “JOURNALISTS FIGHT IRS IN NEW FOIA SUIT: Agency failed to produce requested documents, April 30, 1999.”

An excerpt:

On the heels of their civil lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, journalists for the Western Journalism Center, parent company of WorldNetDaily, filed another lawsuit against the agency after the agency refused to disclose all the documents requested by the journalists in their Freedom of Information
Act request.The journalists initially filed their FOIA request on July 18, 1997,
in an effort to obtain IRS documents concerning the audit of the Western
Journalism Center in 1996. On October 20, 1997, the IRS responded to the journalists’ request, but they failed to turn over all the documents
that were requested. The attorney for the journalists is Judicial Watch Chairman Larry Klayman. Klayman’s Judicial Watch is a legal watchdog that currently has five lawsuits against the White House for such affairs as Chinagate and Filegate. Klayman said that it is his intention to ask the Court to order the IRS to conduct an immediate turnover of the Center’s entire file to the journalists. He commented that the IRS has no legal authority to detain any of the Center’s files and believes that the journalists will get the files
that were requested. In a related lawsuit against the IRS, Landmark Legal Foundation and its president, Mark Levin, filed a FOIA suit against the IRS in their investigation of politically-motivated audits such as the audit of the Western Journalism Center. A survey done by the Western Journalism Center revealed that at least 20 non-profit organizations “unfriendly” to the Clinton administration had faced IRS audits since 1993. Although Landmark has been stonewalled in their efforts to obtain IRS files leading to the names of those individuals responsible for the political audits, Klayman said the Western Journalism Center case should go forward because the journalists are asking for information on behalf of themselves. They aren’t asking for third party information, as is the case in the Landmark suit. Once the journalists have possession of their files, Klayman said that he will be able to show that the audit the journalists endured is the worst-case scenario of all the people and entities that were audited for political reasons. Speaking about the new suit against the IRS, Klayman said, “This case goes hand-in-hand with the other case that the Western Journalism Center filed against the IRS for civil rights violations.” The “other case” that Klayman is referring to is the civil case filed against the IRS during May of last year in which the journalists allege
that the IRS infringed on their First and Fourth rights during the 1996 audit. The journalists further allege that the audit was politically motivated and quote the IRS agent who was directing the audit, Thomas Cederquist, who said that the audit was a “political case” and that “the decisions were being made at the national level.” The journalist’s civil case is currently in the process of appeals. Although the IRS has tried to conjure up various legal reasons as to why they can’t hand over all of the documents that the journalists are requesting in the FOIA suit, Klayman said that, in reality, they’re trying to cover something up.

MORE.

The Hounds @ Fox News Approve IRS Hounding Of Lauryn Hill

Conservatism, Media, Private Property, Taxation

Meta-analysis interests me, as you know; the coverage of the coverage. Far more revealing to me than the quotidian details of Lauryn Hills’ hounding by the IRS was the manner in which Fox News, the so-called conservative network, framed Ms. Hill’s failure to pay her taxes.

After all, Hill’s story is humdrum—that of the theft of private property by the state (anyone still want to argue that taxes are not paid at the point of a gun? “Forfeit your private property or lose your liberty”).

Both Shepard Smith and Megyn Kelley gloated that the threat of prison did the trick and compelled the singer to fork over close to a million dollars in taxes owed. At Fox News, this was a good-news story.

The Good “Guy” here is Ms. Hill. Taxation rejects a man’s absolute and natural right to his property and vests property rights in the political establishment. The 16th Amendment (“The Number of The Beast”) does just that.

‘Mad Men’ Go Mad Over MLK

History, Hollywood, Media, Propaganda, Pseudo-history, Race, Racism

I was under the impression that “Mad Men” was intended as a period drama. Last night, however, the Madison Avenue advertising team, generally true-to-the-times, enacted today’s racial scripts. “Mad Men” is set in the 1960s.

(A period drama is where “elaborate costumes, sets and properties are featured in order to capture the ambiance of a particular era.”)

The backdrop to this politically correct revisionism was the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Struck by political correctness, one “Mad Man” even berates a colleague for not grieving appropriately. The annoying Megan Draper, who has begun to sound very 2013, drags the Draper kids to a nighttime vigil, as rioters rage around them. Don Draper suddenly finds love in his heart for one of his neglected waifs, when the child directs a syrupy word to a black man.

Really? A little too forced and didactic, if you ask me.

Jacqueline Kennedy, as revealed from audio recordings of her historic 1964 conversations with historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., held a low opinion of Martin Luther King. America’s most engaging first lady called Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “terrible,” “tricky” and “a phony.”

“His associations with communists” is why Jacky’s husband ordered the wiretaps on King. Mrs. Kennedy’s brother-in-law, Robert Kennedy—recounts Patrick J. Buchanan in “Suicide of a Superpower”—”saw to it that the FBI carried out the order.”

I guess our Madison Avenue advertising wizards could have been to the left of Jacqueline Kennedy, but it strains credulity.