Jack Kingston

Congressman Kingston is the Co-Chair of the Media Fairness Caucus. The goals of the caucus center on stressing the need for objective and fair reporting. The caucus focuses on finding better ways for elected officials and the media to communicate openly in order to encourage fairness and balance in reporting. To view the September update click on the icon below.

Source: Congressman Lamar Smith

Jack is the Co-Chair of the Media Fairness Caucus and spoke during a press conference today protesting ABC News slanted all-day coverage of the Presidents health care agenda. By refusing to include the opposing view point and rejecting paid advertising that would present an alternative, ABC is taking on the appearance of a White House-run television network.

By now, I’m sure you’ve heard about the Rush Limbaugh’s ‘phony soldier’ comment and how the left-leaning Media Matters has decided to distort it.

Michelle Malkin and others have been following this from the beginning and have a great breakdown. If you read the transcript of the show, it is clear that the ‘phony soldier’ comment was directed to such people as Jesse MacBeth who just recently pled guilty to falsifying claims to the Veterans Affairs. MacBeth posed as a military hero and became a darling of the anti-war groups with appearances at rallies and a YouTube video.

MacBeth’s conviction was part of a year long investigation by the U.S. Attorney in Washington called “Operation Stolen Valor.” ABC News did a story on this days before Rush’s comments and in the story, correspondent Brian Ross used the phrase “phony heroes.”

The left has long targeted conservative talk radio and in particular, Rush Limbaugh. Today, I plan to file a resolution that all Americans serving in the Armed Forces and commending Rush for his efforts to help build and maintain troop morale. Once we are all set, we will post it up.

The liberals in hollywood the mainstream media just can’t control themselves.

Thanks to the good folks at the Media Research Center for pointing out that Barbara Walters has named Nancy Pelosi as the “most fascinating” person of 2006.

Walters celebrated Pelosi’s victory: “We picked our most fascinating person on election day this past November. Next month, Congress will get a Speaker of the House unlike any before. Our most fascinating person of 2006: Mother of five and Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi. In January, Nancy Pelosi will become the most powerful woman in America. She will assume office as the first-ever female Speaker of the House, two heartbeats from the presidency.” Walters soon pleaded to Pelosi: “You’ve talked about sometimes using your mother-of-five voice. Now I sit here, and you’re very gentle. Talk to me in the mother-of-five voice.” She also asked Pelosi to confirm that she thinks President Bush is “incompetent and irresponsible and not a leader?”

How many more fluff pieces must we endure?

Recently we had some decent things to say about the blog of Anderson Cooper 360. But then they slipped back to their liberal ideology and prescribe the “softer” side of terrorists.

They note:

The United States and others clearly call Hezbollah a terrorist group: The source of countless raids, bombings and attacks on Israel; the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, which left 241 people dead; and the architects of all those displays in which young men cover their faces, strap mock bombs to their chests, and parade before the cameras pledging to kill any and all soldiers and civilians alike who oppose their cause.

Followed up by what other, perhaps by what a more enlightened, elitist journalist, might call Hezbollah:

But some people describe another part of Hezbollah. They talk about a group that is beloved in southern Lebanon for running schools, hospitals, social services, even clearing snow in the winter for some communities that the official government of Lebanon does not serve. They say these things make Hezbollah something other than a terrorist group: A quasi-government; a nation within a nation.

This appears to be classic “objective” journalism, right? Wrong. Does anyone here need to take a step back and think about what a “terrorist” really is? I don’t think so.

Fortunately, those who left comments on the post weighed in quickly with a similar candid response:

For the definition of a terrorist, we think it’s apropos to point Anderson and Co. to the President’s speech on 20 September 2001 where he said rather succinctly:

The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself. The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends; it is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that supports them. Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated.

There is a mission at hand Anderson, and you won’t find any apologists here.

UPDATE (1:15 PM): It doesn’t look like Anderson will find any apologists at Wizbang either.

UPDATE (2:41 PM): Mary Katharine Ham doesn’t seem to be sympathizing with Hezbollah either.

As early as today, the House of Representatives will take up a House Resolution responding to the outrage we are hearing from constituents and Members regarding the leaking and publication of subsequent information which has now tipped off the terrorists to surveillance efforts (Jack discusses this below in his latest JackCast).

Today’s Associated Press has the latest:

Rep. Jack Kingston, a member of the House GOP leadership, said it will be clear that Republicans are mainly concerned about The New York Times because of what he said was a record of publishing classified information.

“Somebody clearly broke the law in leaking this to The New York Times. The New York Times in my opinion has simply acted irresponsibly,” Kingston, R-Ga., said.

If you haven’t been closely monitoring this issue, here’s a few items to help bring you back to speed:
Michael Barone
Treasury Secretary John Snow [via Michelle Malkin]
Jack Kelly
Hugh Hewitt
John McIntyre

Add any good reads in the comments…

“Somewhere a terrorist has changed his operations and saved his life thanks to the New York Times, and somewhere an American is in danger because of that same article in the same newspaper.” -U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston

iTuners subscribe to the JackCast by clicking the poster above. All others can find the audio file at the podcasting station.

The Vice President just delivered hard-hitting remarks about NYTgate.

Excerpts below and emphasis mine.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: “In the decade prior to 9/11, we spent more than $2 trillion on national security. Yet we lost nearly 3,000 Americans at the hands of 19 men armed with box cutters and airline tickets. In the case of al Qaeda we are not dealing with large armies that we can track, or uniforms we can see, or men with territory of their own to defend. Their preferred tactic, which they boldly proclaim, is to slip into countries, blend in among the innocent, and kill without mercy and without restraint. They have intelligence and counterintelligence operations of their own. They are using the most sophisticated communications technology they can get their hands on.

“Some in the press, in particular The New York Times, have made the job of defending against further terrorist attacks more difficult by insisting on publishing detailed information about vital national security programs.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yup, even the photogs have bias folks…

[h-t Mary Katharine]

The new White House Press Secretary, Tony Snow, is taking media bias head on. Check out this article.

White House sources said Snow, who started on the job Monday and has yet to give his first public press briefing, is determined to aggressively counter what the administration considers unfair assertions in both news and editorials about Bush. At the same time, he is eager to make the notoriously secretive administration more accessible to the press.

WELCOME news!!

After reading this post by CNN’s Senior Political Analyst Bill Schneider, someone please tell me that there’s no bias in the media. I mean seriously. Is the sky really falling?

Thanks to the good work of one of our favorite blogs, NewsBusters.org, it looks like ole’ Bill Schneider has quite a track record of distorting the “news.”

Some people laugh at blogs and the blogosphere or put the word “blog” or “blogosphere” in quotes (like that) to help distance themselves from the medium. It’s a small little thing to put a word in quotes, but in this business, punctuation can make quite a difference. And we notice.

Anyway, just cruising some of my favorite blogs when I was surprised to see that Exxon, yup that one, had just hosted a bloggers conference call with some of the top conservative bloggers.

Mary Katharine Ham has a good summary of the call with links to the other bloggers.

This is interesting because it shows that “real” businesses, (quotes added for emphasis and sarcasm) are starting to work with blogs to get around the MSM to tell the other side of the story.

What do you think?

This is a great example of young conservatives calling it like they see it.

You be the judge. Post a comment and let us know what you think.

UPDATE: PeachPundit agrees.

Is The Mainstream Media Bias?

Michael Barone of the U.S. News & World Report has an interesting post on his blog, Barone Blog, where he seeks to help answer this question by taking a closer look at the hiring practices of The New York Times and the Washington Post.

Barone sums up media bias well when he recalls a conversation he once had with a network executive:

The evidence suggests that editors at the NYT and the Post have found it natural to recruit from the liberal magazines but that it does not seem to have crossed their minds to recruit from the conservative magazines. Why not?

Here’s my guess. I once had a conversation with an executive at one of the three broadcast network news organizations that went about like this. “Don’t you think the fact that 90 percent of your people are Democrats affects your work product?” “No, it doesn’t affect our work product at all, because we have professional standards of objectivity,” etc., etc. “Then what you’re saying is that your work product would be the same if 90 percent of your people were Republicans?” “No, then it would be biased.”

In other words, only liberals can see the world objectively. Conservatives are inherently biased. If that’s your mind-set, it makes sense to recruit people from the New Republic and the American Prospect, and it makes no sense to recruit people from National Review, the Weekly Standard and the American Spectator.

Media bias is one of the driving reasons why Republicans should look at New Media strategies to send their message and articulate their ideology.

In fact, Michael Barone is quoted today by the folks at the Wall Street Journal saying:

“Stories about American heroes, stories about soldiers building schools and water systems, stories about the successes of Iraqis — you have to look awfully hard to find them in most news media today. What you do see is a determination to make Vietnam and Watergate happen again. All of which brings to mind an old politician’s comment on an idealistic young colleague: ‘He actually thinks this place is on the level.’ The good news is that many Americans have caught on. Newspaper circulation is down, and so is viewership of broadcast TV network news. New media offering a different point of view — talk radio, Fox News, the blogosphere — are thriving. We can’t design the news media from scratch, but we can scratch some of the news media we have.”

The Revolution moves forward.