They have gone all in on a fundamentally anti-progressive narrative that a). Spends all day every day fixated on excuses for why Hillary lost to the guy they promised would lose. That would be Comey excuses and Russiagate and Ukrainegate as an extension of Russiagate. b). Fixates on "Trump is bad" as the end all be all of political analysis. Everything that is going wrong in the country and the world is centered on him and him alone because to evaluate the underlying circumstances that brought us Trump would be to question the undying wisdom of that Democratic elite. The people who created the underlying conditions that brought us Trump definitely do not want to talk about those underlying conditions that brought us Trump. and c). They basically devoted the network to the lionization of Bush-era neo-con Republicans and the national security blob. Nicole Wallace, Steve Schmidt, John Brennan, Malcolm Nance etc.She also describes the network's atrocious treatment of Andrew Yang, explaining that they cut him out of debate advertising graphics and even referred to him as 'John Yang.'
Meanwhile, the network is absolutely shameless in the way that it covers the 3 anti-establishment candidates, Bernie, Tulsi, and Yang. Every interview with Tulsi must include the obligatory "Assad apologist" question and conspiracies about her running third party or being a Russian asset abound. In these times recently did an analysis of Bernie's primetime coverage on the network and found that he is mentioned 1/3 as often as Biden and far more negatively than any other candidate.
Trump himself was told by his officials that the theory was “completely debunked” long before the president pressed Ukraine to investigate it anyway, according to Tom Bossert, Trump’s first homeland security adviser. In testimony at the closed-door hearings that preceded Wednesday’s public session, Fiona Hill, a former special assistant to Trump on the National Security Council, said it was bogus.
“It is a fiction that the Ukrainian government was launching an effort to upend our election,” Hill testified. “I’m extremely concerned that this is a rabbit hole that we’re all going to go down in between now and the 2020 election, and it will be to all of our detriment.”
Broadly, the theory contends that a hack of the Democratic National Committee in 2016 was a setup designed to cast blame on Russia but actually was cooked up by or with the help of Ukrainians. The evidence points conclusively to Russia, not Ukraine.
Still, it’s an undeniable fact that Ukraine worked to help Democrats oppose Trump in 2016. A Ukrainian court has ruled that its government “meddled” illegally in the American election, among other things by providing information about payments made to former Trump campaign manager Manafort.Ken Vogel's story from 2017:
This was after a veteran Democratic operative named Andrea Chalupa traveled to Ukraine in search of Trump oppo, which, not that anyone cares, is a similar story to Ukrainegate, the difference being that Chalupa was not president of the United States when she asked a foreign government for dirt about a presidential candidate. Even making the simple factual observation that the Chalupa/Ukraine transaction took place, however, has become an impossibility in the current media landscape.
The Chalupa story was originally broken by Politico reporter Ken Vogel in 2017 (“Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire”). But Politico now describes Trump being committed to “unsubstantiated allegations… a conspiracy theory that Ukraine aided Democrats in the 2016 election.”
Politico originally reported that conspiracy theory!
Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found.
A Ukrainian-American operative who was consulting for the Democratic National Committee met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose ties between Trump, top campaign aide Paul Manafort and Russia, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.
The Ukrainian efforts had an impact in the race, helping to force Manafort’s resignation and advancing the narrative that Trump’s campaign was deeply connected to Ukraine’s foe to the east, Russia. But they were far less concerted or centrally directed than Russia’s alleged hacking and dissemination of Democratic emails.
Sworn statements from two Ukrainian officials admitting that their agency tried to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election in favor of Hillary Clinton. The effort included leaking an alleged ledger showing payments to then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort;
Contacts between Democratic figures in Washington and Ukrainian officials that involved passing along dirt on Donald Trump;
Financial records showing a Ukrainian natural gas company routed more than $3 million to American accounts tied to Hunter Biden, younger son of then-Vice President Joe Biden, who managed U.S.-Ukraine relations for the Obama administration. Biden’s son served on the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company, Burisma Holdings;
Records that Vice President Biden pressured Ukrainian officials in March 2016 to fire the prosecutor who oversaw an investigation of Burisma Holdings and who planned to interview Hunter Biden about the financial transfers;
Correspondence showing members of the State Department and U.S. Embassy in Kiev interfered or applied pressure in criminal cases on Ukrainian soil;
Disbursements of as much as $7 billion in Ukrainian funds that prosecutors believe may have been misappropriated or taken out of the country, including to the United States.
FAKE NEWS! pic.twitter.com/ta8ii8yetP— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 16, 2019
Last week, the Commission on Presidential Debates announced the schedule of 2020 presidential debates. President Trump should quickly dismiss that schedule as unacceptable and announce that if any debates will be held at all in 2020, it will be only after extensive, direct negotiations between him and the eventual nominee of the Democratic Party and their respective designated representatives. And those negotiations should begin from a premise that the Republicans will no longer play by the biased rules of a deeply unbalanced Manhattan-Beltway media elite. Explicitly articulating this declaration of intent now, along with the possibility that, as in 1968 and 1972, there won’t be any debates, would do both the public and the elite media a great service.He is absolutely right. President Trump cannot allow the Democrats and the media dictate the terrain on which the 2020 battle for the White House will be fought. Trump is the incumbent. He is the home team and the defending naational champion, if you want to use a sports analogy. He occupies conquered territory and he should defend it on terms in which he has at least equal input.
According to a recent Gallup survey, 13 percent of Americans “have a great deal of trust” in the mass media and 28 percent “a fair amount,” with “69% of Democrats [saying] they have trust and confidence in it, while 15% of Republicans and 36% of independents agree.” So more than half the country distrusts the media, and that suspicion is overwhelming among those on the center-right. And why shouldn’t they be suspicious, given incidents such as moderator Candy Crowley’s infamous intervention in the second debate in 2012?
...
Trump is the incumbent who can restore presidential debates to serious exercises in exploring the crucial differences between the two major-party candidates, but he has to begin by taking a wrecking ball to the perceived entitlement of a system begun before cellphones and the Internet and built on the thoroughly debunked belief in media “objectivity.” So start over. There are plenty of alternatives, and the best would involve open access and genuinely smart, diverse questioners who are not rehearsed to seek conflict, headlines or ratings. A lesser dose of media celebrity is a higher dose of fairness to the voters. (And please, no more idiotic “town halls.”)
BREAKING: #ExposeCNN PART 2 - Network Picks Winners and Losers on Eve of Debate.— James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) October 15, 2019
Full video uploading now. pic.twitter.com/aGvxWJEwHK
BREAKING: @CNN Senior Justice Correspondent @evanperez says '@JoeBiden has a problem because of his son's(#HunterBiden) foreign business dealings; "IT LOOKS BAD. IT SMELLS BAD."#ExposeCNN pic.twitter.com/UlgzsHOOnh
— James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) October 15, 2019
Get some popcorn, folks. It's gonna be a very entertaining week.This week, a CNN insider will blow the whistle and through Project Veritas will release dozens of recordings made of officials at the highest levels of CNN, revealing a political agenda, bias and misconduct hidden from public view.This series of tapes — which we think will be the biggest story of the year for Project Veritas — blends two extraordinary series of events; a brave insider secretly recording at work. This is a hard-hitting piece of hidden camera muckraking into one of the supposed “most trusted names in news.”
By the time staffers in the Situation Room got the president of Ukraine on the phone at 9:03 a.m., Trump had just finished firing off tweets claiming complete vindication from former special counsel Robert Mueller’s congressional testimony the day before about the Russia investigation. On the call, Trump was first to speak. He showered the 41-year-old Ukrainian, a novice politician and former comedian, with praise following his party’s victory in parliamentary elections. Zelenskiy chatted about how he wanted to “drain the swamp” in Kyiv and how he wished the European Union would provide more financial support. He told Trump that Ukraine was ready to buy more Javelin anti-tank missiles from the United States.This is a blatantly false characterization of the content and context of this conversation. Here is the relevant exchange as provided in the official, undisputed transcript of the call:
The next 10 words that came out of Trump’s mouth — “I would like you to do us a favor, though” — are what triggered the House impeachment inquiry that has imperiled his presidency.
Trump asked Zelenskiy to work with Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr to look into Biden and his son, who served on the board of a Ukrainian gas company.
President Zelenskyy: Yes you are absolutely right. Not only 100%, but actually 1000% and I can tell you the following; I did talk to Angela Merkel and I did meet with her I also met and talked with Macron and I told them that they are not doing quite as much as they need to be doing on the issues with the sanctions. They are not enforcing the sanctions. They are not working as much as they should work for Ukraine. It turns out that even though logically, the European Union should be our biggest partner but technically the United States is a much bigger partner than the European Union and I'm very grateful to you for that because the United States is doing quite a lot for Ukraine. Much more than the European Union especially when we are talking about sanctions against the Russian Federation. I would also like to thank you for your great support in the area of defense. We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps specifically we are almost. ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes.The AP story will run in newspapers and on news websites around the world, and ordinary folks who have neither the time nor the interest nor the energy to find out what was actually said will read this. They will come away from this article thinking that President Zelensky asked for Javelin anti-tank missiles and President Trump said "I need a favor; go get Joe Biden for me. You can have your missiles."
The President: I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike... I guess you have one of your wealthy people... The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you're surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it's very important that you do it if that's possible.
President Zelenskyy: Yes it is very important for me and everything that you just mentioned earlier. For me as a President, it is very important and we are open for any future cooperation. We are ready to open a new page on cooperation in relations between the United States and Ukraine. For that purpose, I just recalled our ambassador from United States and he will be replaced by a very competent and very experienced ambassador who will work hard on making sure that our two nations are getting closer. I would also like and hope to see him having your trust and your confidence and have personal relations with you so we can cooperate even more so. I will personally tell you that one of my assistants spoke with Mr. Giuliani just recently and we are hoping very much that Mr. Giuliani will be able to travel to Ukraine and we will meet once he comes to Ukraine. I just wanted to assure you once again that you have nobody but friends around us. I will make sure that I surround myself with the best and most experienced people. I also wanted to tell you that we are friends. We are great friends and you Mr. President have friends in our country so we can continue our strategic partnership. I also plan to surround myself with great people and in addition to that investigation, I guarantee as the President of Ukraine that all the investigations will be done openly and candidly.. That I can assure you.
Quick… name the hottest three stories covered by major sports media outlets since the BCS Championship Game on January 7, 2013? How about these: Manti Te’o’s undead fake girlfriend, AJ McCarron’s hot girlfriend and her budding fame and a bunch of horse puckey about two snake oil salesmen peddling deer antler spray, holographic chips and “Beam Ray” bulbs.
It’s probably just a coincidence that all three of these ridiculous topics somehow involve players from the two teams that met in Miami last month, right?
When once respected media outlets like Sports Illustrated and ESPN are chasing down leads on stories that would be spiked by the National Enquirer, what does it say about the quality of today’s sports media?
When gossip websites like Deadspin and TMZ have better sourced and better researched articles than credentialed journalists purporting to provide objective news and analysis, one has to wonder if the latter hasn’t replaced the former as legitimate and trustworthy outlets.
Do sportswriters really want to do pieces like the Sports Illustrated story on SWATS? Do their editors really enjoy signing off on reports about the sexual orientation of the admitted Te’o hoaxer and his victim?
Seriously?
What should have been the biggest story in the month of January was Lance Armstrong and his confession to having used performance enhancing drugs during his multiple Tour de France wins. That got some press, but it has been dwarfed by the SWATS garbage. Here’s a blockbuster about a disgraced former champion who admits to using performance enhancing drugs and it’s being ignored in favor of a story about two guys peddling alleged performance enhancing drugs, despite the fact that respected scientists and researchers adamantly dismiss their products as so much snake oil.
Stir in the hoopla created by the revelation that the heartwarming story of Manti Te’o’s star crossed love affair that wasn’t and the Armstrong story is buried in the signal-to-noise ratio.
There is a reason you haven’t seen much bandwidth wasted on Te’o’s holographic girlfriend, SWATS’ holographic frequency chips and the very real and very lovely Ms. Webb’s meteoric rise in popularity.
It’s not news. They’re all non-stories. These are punch lines to potty room jokes but they’re being pushed as major news topics.
What about Mark Emmert’s recent revelation that the NCAA violated its own rules when conducting the Miami enforcement investigation?
Yawn.
Wait? What? Manti Te’o’s hoaxer may be gay and was deeply in love with his victim? Rush to print and get Katie Couric on line one, please.
Disgusting.
This is a story that any serious journalist covering it should have gotten right. It wasn’t really a breaking story, and the need to make deadline shouldn’t have resulted in a failure to check basic facts and make sure that what was published was truthful and accurate.
It was a glaring example of a disturbing trend in media coverage, and a serious breach of journalistic ethics and responsibility.
In our own Blogger Code of Ethics—featured prominently at the top of every page at IBCR—we commit to the following:
Why would they abandon a code of professionalism and ethics that was drilled into their heads from the opening lectures in Journalism 101? The answer is simple: The media believed Te’o’s story because they wanted it to be true. It was enticing, dramatic and plausible. It was a story of almost Shakespearean tragedy involving star-crossed lovers. But most disturbingly, it fit the narrative they wanted to go with.
Factual accuracy be damned.
This should sound eerily familiar, because in the run-up to the 2008 Presidential Election, numerous news outlets were shown to have either ignored basic facts or simply made them up in order to advance an agenda. In that disgusting foray into advocacy journalism, the media’s agenda was to paint then Senator Barack Obama as the historic, transformative messianic figure they all wanted him to be.
In the Te’o story, the agenda was to paint the Notre Dame linebacker as an inspirational figure who had overcome much personal tragedy to be at the absolute top of the game. The agenda was to get this young man as much personal attention as possible; to hype him, build him up and possibly win him a Heisman Trophy.
While the consequences for this country couldn’t be more different between these two stories, the root cause of both is still the same—journalists failed to do their jobs and America was sold a bill of goods.
There is an old saying in journalism—if your mother tells you that she loves you, it’s Ok to believe her but you’d better check it out. No one checked it out.
Beginning with Jeremy Schaap’s late night, off-camera interview with Te’o, the media is going to do everything it can to protect their six o’clock. The narrative now will be that since Te’o was the victim of a hoax, they were too. Since Te’o believed the Kekua death story, they were Ok in believing it and they’re not really at fault for allowing the public to be duped.
Who’s accountable?
Accountability isn’t about finding someone to blame. It’s about making sure that everything that needs to be done actually gets done, and that someone or some process exists to ensure that it does get done. If “Accountability” means finding a head to roll after something didn’t get done—like basic fact checking—then there is no accountability.
That’s a serious problem, sports fans. And it’s a problem that doesn’t seem to be getting much better.
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Photo credit: Reuters
Yes, the NCAA probably did interview standout recruit Reuben Foster and his mother earlier this week. Could the Alabama High School Athletic Association (AHSAA) also have interviewed Foster and Anita Paige? Certainly. It could have been a two-fer.
I do not believe those who claim that the NCAA wasn’t involved and here’s why.
Michael Carvell is a homer recruiting reporter for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, one of the largest daily newspapers in the southeastern United States. Those disputing his account write for, shall we say, somewhat less credible outlets. Homer or not, the AJC carries gravitas. The other guys much less so.
But the real reason for placing more credibility with the AJC story is that it follows a much more sensible stream of logic than other accounts.
Here’s the key part of Carvell’s story:
When contacted around 1 p.m. Monday, Paige was asked directly if she was meeting later in the day with the NCAA and she replied, “Yes, how did you know?” The reports later in the afternoon, including by AuburnUndercover.com’s Bryan Matthews, were that the early evening meeting would be with Alabama high school officials.
When reached at 9 p.m. Monday and asked to clarify whether the meeting was held with the NCAA or Alabama high school officials, Paige responded, “I can’t say. I’m not allowed to comment on that.”
Earlier in the day, Paige told the AJC, “They are talking with Reuben and me. They want to make sure there was nothing illegal done to get us down here, or anything like that. They want to make sure there wasn’t a college booster involved.
Only much later in the day did Matthews’ and other reports emerge, claiming that unnamed sources close to Foster said that it was the AHSAA, not the NCAA, who would be conducting the interview.
Carvell has on-the-record answers directly from the subject of the story. Those refuting him cite unnamed sources “close to” the subjects of the story.
Second, Paige answers another direct question with another answer strongly suggesting that the NCAA was the interested agency: “They want to make sure there was nothing illegal done to get us down here, or anything like that. They want to make sure there wasn’t a college booster involved.”
While the AHSAA—whose sole responsibility here is to make sure that Foster’s transfer constitutes a bona fide move under that agency’s bylaws—might be interested in whether the Foster’s got some help in moving, but as long as the criteria set up by AHSAA for a bona fide move are met, the transfer is deemed legit.
Only the NCAA would be so keenly interested in whether a college booster is somehow involved in a transfer to a high school in mere spitting distance of the college to which he recently committed that they would set up an interview. It’s unusual, but it’s not unheard of for the NCAA to get involved during a prospects’ recruitment and warn a school to back off while it investigates.
But the real kicker in granting more credibility to the AJC homer vs. the fan site homers is Paige’s final statement to Carvell:
When reached at 9 p.m. Monday and asked to clarify whether the meeting was held with the NCAA or Alabama high school officials, Paige responded, “I can’t say. I’m not allowed to comment on that.”
The NCAA’s policy is precisely the opposite. NCAA staff are notoriously tight-lipped. They will not acknowledge whether a school or individual is under investigation. During its interviews, all parties involved are instructed not to reveal the details of the interview or give specifics to anyone (especially the media) in the interests of protecting the integrity of the investigation.
Last of all, NCAA’s investigative procedure is to collect evidence first and then interview people connected with potential violations. Put another way, a sit-down with the NCAA comes closer to the end of their investigative model, not at the beginning.
In light of this, which of the two agencies are most likely to have instructed Paige to keep quiet?
Carvell directly asked Paige if she and her son would be interviewed by the NCAA. She answered “yes” unequivocally. Carvell then asked Paige what the subject was to be, and she gave an answer that only the NCAA really cares about. And when Carvell asked her to clarify, she refused, explaining that she was “not allowed to comment.”
That has the NCAA’s fingerprints all over it.
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Ladies and gentlemen, if you wondered whether you could no longer trust major media outlets to practice responsible journalism in reporting the news, ABC’s atrocious coverage of the theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado should close the deal for you.
By now, you’ve likely heard that a 24-year old white male named James Holmes walked into a crowded movie theater in Aurora armed to the teeth and started shooting.
Victims ranged from a three month old infant to adults, including active duty members of the military.
Just as with the Times Square bomber, the Gabrielle Giffords shooting and the Alabama-Huntsville shooting, the media instantly thought “this must be the action of some deranged Tea Party member upset over Obamacare” and sought to find evidence of same.
ABC’s George Stephanopoulos and Brian Ross thought they had it:
Stephanopoulos: I'm going to go to Brian Ross. You've been investigating the background of Jim Holmes here. You found something that might be significant.
Ross: There's a Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado, page on the Colorado Tea party site as well, talking about him joining the Tea Party last year. Now, we don't know if this is the same Jim Holmes. But it's Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado.
Stephanopoulos: Okay, we'll keep looking at that. Brian Ross, thanks very much.
As it turns out, the name “James Holmes” is pretty damned common in Aurora, Colorado and the shooter James Holmes is not Tea Partier James Holmes, who happens to be a 50-something Hispanic conservative.
By any standard, this is unacceptable. ABC later retracted the connection and issued an apology for “disseminating that information before it was properly vetted,” but the bell cannot be unrung.
Falsely connecting the shooting to a political activist should be enough to have Stephanopoulos and Ross removed from the air, along with their producers, directors and anyone else responsible for maintaining standards of professional journalism. But there is an aggravating factor at work that should completely end any debate over the matter: ABC News’ first instinct in learning the shooter’s name was to find evidence—however flimsy—that James Holmes was a crazy, angry white male activist in that awful, violent and racist Tea Party movement.
UPDATE: A reader emails this observation: “Another aggravating factor is that ABC could have put the older James Holmes in considerable personal danger. There are a lot of angry people out there who wouldn’t think twice of a little vigilante justice.” Well said.
ABC News was never interested in learning or communicating the truth about Holmes’ background. They were only interested in telling the viewing audience that these are the kinds of people opposed to the Obama Regime and its statist agenda. Their message: These people are so deranged, so obsessed with this regime that they start shooting in crowded theaters and blowing up tourist attractions.
You are reading a website with more credibility than any of the three major over-the-air broadcast news networks.
This website practices a code of ethics that has been trampled upon by a horribly biased, grossly incompetent and wholly apathetic media apparatus.
Let that sink in, for a moment.
If ABC doesn’t fire these two, then you can.
Turn them off.
Exit Question: Do you think CBS or NBC crews wouldn’t have done exactly the same thing if they had been the ones to find a James Holmes listed on the Colorado Tea Party website? Their only sin was allowing Ross and ABC to report it first.
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A few can be classified as hypersensitive, and Auburn fans’ reaction to Pete Fiutak’s comparison of Andrew Luck and Cam Newton highlights why they’re as over the top as anyone.
This should surprise absolutely no one. Objectivity is not to be tolerated when it comes to coverage of their football program. Woe be to any reporter or columnist who doesn’t channel his inner Phillip Marshall in every story they publish.
Thayer Evans. Joe Schad. Pete Thamel. Kevin Scarbinsky. Pete Fiutak.
Fuitak responds to a question on the matter in this post at CollegeFootballNews.com:
Q: Knowing what you know right now … do you take Cam Newton after his rookie year, or Andrew Luck? Or even Robert Griffin? Let’s say Cam stayed an extra year. Would Luck still be the No. 1 pick? - P.K.
A: If Cam had stayed for one more year Luck would still be the No. 1 overall pick. The same knocks on Newton that were out there last year would’ve been part of the equation, but I do think he’d go before RGIII. Had Luck come out in 2011, he’d have gone to Carolina and Newton would’ve gone to either Denver at the two or Buffalo at the three.
But the first question is interesting. It would be a coin-flip, but I’d probably go with the known and take a chance that Cam really is the real deal.
Cam had the best rookie season of any quarterback in the history of the NFL. That doesn’t really mean much, though, considering the team still stunk. Rick Mirer had one of the greatest rookie QB seasons of all-time and Vince Young looked like a world-beater after his first season – they didn’t exactly build on their strong debuts. The NFL has a funny way of adjusting to styles – notice the beating Michael Vick took last year - and the rushing part of Newton’s game has to become a memory or he’ll have a short shelf life. And it will. He has all the skills, size, and tools to become an elite pocket passer who happens to run once in a while. But can he be patient enough?
I’m still not 100% sold that he’s going to handle things all that well if the Panthers keep struggling.
There were times last year when Newton started to get a little petty and appeared on the verge of tossing his team under the bus, and there’s credible belief out there that he might be a wee bit too in love with being Cam Newton, Superstar.
But it’s not really fair to Newton, or anyone, to be compared to Luck as a pro prospect. Believe me, because I have all the scouting guides going back to the 1970s, there hasn’t been this much gushing over a prospect since John Elway.
Despite praise for Newton’s rookie season, and despite the fact that he’d probably have taken Newton as “the real deal,” Auburn fans are upset that Fiutak doesn’t see Newton as an absolute football messiah. In likely reference to this ESPN interview, Fiutak notes that Newton has something of an ego issue. Fiutak isn’t the first to note that the guy the team refers to as “Mr. Mopeyhead” takes himself seriously and doesn’t get along with others when things aren’t going well. Fiutak does a good job of presenting both sides—Newton a gifted athlete and difference making quarterback, but he also has an attitude and he still has much to prove.
“Dumbass,” one Bunker poster says of Fiutak. “Douchebag,” says another. “Idiot,” says a third. A fourth Bunker poster wants Cam to be compared to one of history’s all time greats—Peyton Manning. Newton is hella good—after all he broke Mannings rookie records—but let’s not reserve Newton’s spot in the Hall of Fame yet, shall we?
“Butthurt… bitter tool,” says an AUTigers.com poster. “This may be the most stupid thing a man ever put down,” says another. A third opines and asks, “… complete fool. How does he have a job as a sportwriter?”
Auburn fans on Twitter weren’t much better than forum majorities. @TheAuburner called Fiutak’s answer an “unhealthy obsession,” and suggested that the writer’s motivations may have had a racial underpinning. There were a number of other tweets of the same type and ferocity seen on forums but I think you get the point.
To their credit, a small minority of Auburn fans saw Fiutak’s answer for what it was—an unbiased opinion based on observation of on- and off-field issues.
When a writer does an unabashed hit piece like Nolan Nawrocki did at Pro Football Weekly, the vitriol is well deserved. Any fan base righteously rises up to smite the offender. But Fiutak’s answer to the question was straight down the middle, and he still got hammered for daring to be objective.
Objectivity is not to be tolerated in the loveliest village. Just ask Evan Woodbery of al.com’s Auburn Bureau.
Exit Question: How do you think the Alabama fan base would compare? If an objective analysis of Trent Richardson’s prospects showed a good chance he might not be taken in the first round of the upcoming NFL Draft, what would the Bama Nation’s reaction be? We’re not exactly known for our ability to take kindly to poor coverage, but how do Tide fans handle the truth?
Georgia’s Mark Richt has his eyes on Alabama’s top football recruit for 2013.
The coach of the SEC East champions recently hosted linebacker Reuben Foster of Troup County and let him know that he’s a priority for the Bulldogs.
The 6-foot-1, 240-pound Foster has been committed to Alabama since last summer, before the start of his junior year.
"I chose Alabama because of the tradition they have and it is like family there," Foster told Scout.com. "They have a lot of national championships and that is what I want to play for. I also like how they put a lot of linebackers in the NFL because that is where I want to play."
"I know playing for a coach like Nick Saban that I will be taken care of. Coach Saban not only teaches football, but he teaches his players about life. My family wants me to play for a man like that."
While Foster remains firm in his pledge to Alabama, he has visited Georgia often, including a trip in December that he called “awesome.”
Foster told OnlineAthens.com that he enjoyed his trip and that UGA was coming on strong.
“Georgia is coming strong and very hard at me,” Foster said. “I like Georgia — I always have — but Alabama is still No. 1. Georgia is up there now, and they are higher than they have been. It was awesome at Georgia, and I loved everything about the visit. I know we will be talking again soon.”
Richt is aware that Foster is firmly committed to Alabama, but he isn’t fazed. In fact, Georgia had Foster back in Athens again just a couple of weeks ago.
It’s easy to troll homers who, under a banner of objectivity, pump sunshine and do their best to protect the backside of the home team. The harder that backside gets kicked on the recruiting trail, the harder the homers pump and the easier it is to spot’em.
Over here at IBCR, we are just as biased as the AJC. The difference is we don’t try to hide it and in fact, we embrace it. It’s called being honest with readers, and as long as you’re honest, you’re trusted.
Shawn Payton—not to be confused with Saints head coach Sean Payton—is an Auburn fan and a Detroit Lions fan who didn’t care about the fact that the Saints were beating the Lions in the wildcard playoff game at the Mercedes Benz Superdome.
So, he decided to make a phone call:
A few minutes after tight end Jimmy Graham caught a Drew Brees touchdown pass to extend the Saints lead to 24-14 in the third quarter, the Superdome's Gate F reception desk received a threatening call at 9:12 p.m., according to an FBI affidavit filed in federal court Wednesday.
"I will blow up your building," a man said after confirming that he had reached the Superdome, which was jammed with a capacity crowd of more than 73,000.
As the Saints continued lighting up the scoreboard, a second threatening call came in at 10:03 p.m., with a message intended for Saints coach Sean Payton, according to the affidavit by FBI agent Dawn Hofmann, a member of the agency's Joint Terrorism Task Force.
"Hi, I want you to relay a message to the sideline. If your stupid Southern team keeps winning, there will be reper...severe consequences. OK?" a man said after a failed Lions onside kick set the Saints up for a short touchdown drive that would ice the game.
Updyke’s alleged poisoning of the Toomer’s Corner trees will likely be tried as a felony, due largely to the righteous indignation of the media. Downing’s alleged sexual assault has also been characterized as a felony.
Payton? Traveling to Detroit to face a misdemeanor charge.
Poison trees and call a radio show to brag about it? Off to prison you go.
Do a stupid, inexcusable frat house prank and have it make YouTube? Off to prison you go.
Threaten to blow up a stadium with 75,000 people inside—more than a decade after 9/11—and the absolute worst you face is a year in jail. I guess terrorist threats don’t weigh as much as they used to.
When does the Superdome management and City of New Orleans apologize to this guy?
Where is the raging news media clamoring for this guy’s head?
Helmet tap to Throw the Flag.
We are Bama fans here. Everyone knows that. It’s a bias that we do not hide even as we seek to provide facts and reasoned opinions based on them. You know where we’re coming from and we’re all fine with that here.
To be or do otherwise would be disingenuous and such insincerity would be a scar on our integrity. If you can’t trust us to tell the truth about who we are and what we stand for, then we’re just another bunch of hacks with hidden agendas.
Why hide?
Kirk Herbstreit makes no excuse for being an Ohio State fan. Rece Davis makes no excuses for his degree from Alabama. We see no reason why any member of the media should ever pretend to be something they’re not.
When you get that “thrill up your leg,” be honest about it.
Just sayin.
Helmet tap to @HeatherDThomas1 for the image find.
Banditref pokes fun at the baloney on white bread predictions we get from major sports media, who see their prognostications destroyed once the teams take the field on that first week in September. That week can’t get here soon enough, because you know what? This is pretty much what we’ll have to put up with between now and then.
Enjoy. Visit BanditRef here and follow him on Twitter here.
While it’s really not fair to go after Gould on al.com’s perception of bias, the denizens of TiderInsider.com have a valid point. Gould and Birmingham News columnist Kevin Scarbinsky traveled to Tuscaloosa last month to interview Tom Al-Betar, the central figure in a manufactured story of Alabama players and a relationship with a menswear store. The TI posters compared that trip to Tuscaloosa with the media’s lack of coverage on reports that the NCAA was actively investigating alleged Auburn violations in south Florida and Montgomery. Both of the latter reports came from verified, named sources while the menswear story came from anonymous posters on an Auburn message board. The gist of the TI denizens complaint: the media will look into a made up story about Alabama, but will ignore two credible stories about Auburn.
That gives a clear indication of bias, but it’s not Gould’s cross to bear. Again, he’s the Bama beat writer. Covering Auburn is not his job. Traveling to Tuscaloosa and giving Al-Betar a chance to defend himself is good journalism. Letting Scarbinsky tag along may not have been the best decision, but why didn’t Gould’s colleagues in the Auburn bureau follow up on the south Florida or Montgomery reports? Where was Scarbinsky on those?
Another great question to ask the media: Why have the beat writers or columnists spent so little ink on the fact that Auburn refuses to honor open records requests? Jon Solomon indicated that the Birmingham News has had its requests ignored since December. Randy Kennedy of the Mobile Press-Register has also had his requests ignored. Mark Schlabach of ESPN? Ditto.
In April, Auburn hired an Associate AD for compliance who was deeply involved in Georgia a Tech’s disgusting case of cover-up and deceit regarding impermissible benefits. In July, that Associate AD was informed—in writing—of specific sanctions against him and requirements imposed by the Committee on Infractions.
Service of that notice and requirement is clearly a public record, yet there is no indication that the state media was even aware of the hire, his connection to the disgraceful GT case or his sanctions. If the state media wants a way to end the downward fiscal spiral they’re in, they could start by eliminating any perception of bias.
Diligently pursuing open records requests filed with Auburn University would be an excellent start. If that diligent pursuit is met with the same silence of the recent past, then the state’s media has a professional obligation to blast it on the front page of all three of the al.com’s daily newspapers. The media is being stonewalled and they can’t let it continue.
Until you guys get serious about doing your jobs, firestorms like the one last night will continue, and so will the drop in subscriptions and al.com page views. When readers turn to obviously biased sites like this one to get the truth, you’ve got a credibility problem.
Formally and publicly renewing your open records requests is a cheap, easy first step on the path to restored faith. If those requests are ignored or denied, then you have a story for your Sunday editions.
And you’d damned well better print them, or we shall grill Izzy a second time.
Samantha Steele is a sports reporter for Fox Sports. Joakim Noah was fined $50,000 by NBA Commissioner David Stern for uttering the word “faggot” at a fan during Sunday night’s conference finals game between the Chicago Bulls and Miami Heat. This follows a $100,000 fine imposed on Kobe Bryant of Los Angeles Lakers, who had used the same term when at an official.
Yesterday, Steele asked a simple question via Twitter:
“Can someone please clarify these Kobe/J Noah fines.. What is the rule? You can't say anything offensive? Offensive to whom?”
The reaction from a politically correct NBC Sports blog—which I will not link to—was as swift as it was predictable. The blogger mocked Steele, accused her of bigotry, twisted the context of her question and suggested that her upbringing and religious beliefs were to blame for her alleged intolerance. The blog post reeks of the hypocrisy normally seen on Daily Kooks diaries.
First of all, in none of her writings or Fox Sports broadcast segments has Steele ever cast herself as a political or social conservative. However, her bio indicates that in all likelihood, she’s pretty right of center in how she views the world. Secondly, she’s getting the same treatment other attractive, successful conservative women get. Good looking female conservatives are a favorite target of a breathtakingly misogynistic left. They think absolutely nothing of attacking them by twisting their words, taking them out of context and accusing them of holding absurdly extreme points of view.
Ms. Steele, welcome to a world inhabited by Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann and Dana Loesch. The left simply can’t get past the fact that these women are successful and conservative. They are viewed as a threat and rather than engage in honest discourse, the left—like the hypocrite blogger who slandered Steele—gets personal.
Steele’s question is a valid one and members of the media should be allowed to ask these types of questions without idiots from MSNBC trying to shout them down. Discussing the matter raised by her question means discussing the poisonous environment of political correctness the left is trying to maintain. Lefties want no part of that, because the racism, sexism and homophobia cards are the most valuable cards in their hand. Get rid of them, and they no longer have control over the dialogue. See how that works?
If no one lets the F-word or the N-word offend them anymore, then the left can’t accuse their targets of racism or homophobia.
Was Stern right to fine Bryant and Noah for their inability to control their anger? Probably so, but I think the severity of the fines are backwards. A referee expects a certain amount of verbal abuse. That’s why he makes the big bucks. Fans are customers and you just don’t treat customers that way.
The paragraph above is just one good answer to Steele’s question. There are sure to be others. But attacking her for asking the question is not.
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