Freedom Line Blog

This week, the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press released one of its periodic assessments of public attitudes toward news organizations.

It’s major findings:  “The public’s assessment of the accuracy of news stories is now at its lowest level in more than two decades… Just 29% of Americans say that news organizations generally get their facts straight, while 63% say that news stories are often inaccurate….

“Similarly, only about a quarter (26%) now say that news organizations are careful that their reporting is not politically biased, compared with 60 % who say news organizations are politically biased.  And the percentages saying that news organizations are independent of powerful people and organizations (20%)  or are willing to admit their mistakes (21%) now also match all-time lows.”

Strangely, only a handful of major news organizations reported the Pew Study.

The entire Pew study can be read here.

Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives plan to pass a resolution censuring Congressman Joe Wilson (R-SC) for saying “you lie” during the President’s ObamaCare live infomercial Wednesday night, and refusing to apologize on the floor of the House, even though he has apologized to the President.

We assume that this censure will follow that of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for calling Town Hall protesters “Nazis” and that of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for saying that the CIA lies to Congress all the time.

Too bad there won’t be enough time left that day to deal with the people’s business.  How large is the deficit now?

When Glenn Beck began to expose Van Jones, the “Green Jobs” Czar forced to resign from the Obama administration in the middle of a holiday weekend night, Color of Change, an organization founded by Van Jones, called for advertisers to boycott Beck’s Fox News Channel program.  Some have.

Now, Keith Olbermann is asking (at Daily Kos) for people to provide deleterious information about Beck, his producer and Roger Ailes, President of Fox.  Olbermann says that he will extend the request to his MSNBC audience tonight, making some kind of  what’s good for the goose is good for the gander argument.

Given that “goose” is not a euphemism that we would apply to Jones, nor “gander” to Beck, Mr. Olbermann seems to have forgotten that the really, really big “gander” a bit above his pay grade is General Electric, which owns MSNBC and makes more consumer products subject to boycott than just about any other corporation.

When you begin to see reruns of “Little House on the Prairie” mysteriously appear at 8 pm on MSNBC’s schedule, you may assume that adults at GE have decided that goose liver should not be among the company’s product mix.