Roger Aronoff

Interview with Journalist Ken Timmerman on Iran, Gitmo and Tensions in the Middle East

In light of this weekend’s latest WikiLeaks document dump of more than 250,000 State Department cables, Accuracy in Media’s exclusive interview with veteran journalist Ken Timmerman couldn’t be more timely. As of this weekend, it is clear that most of the world stands in fear of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, and for the most part desires, that actions be taken to keep the regime from gaining those weapons.

Those Pesky Lines Between News and Commentary

In a commentary in The Washington Post on November 14, Ted Koppel, the host of ABC’s Nightline for 25 years, analyzed the modern news landscape, in a piece titled “Olbermann, O’Reilly and the death of real news.” In it, he bemoaned the loss of a unified view of the news, a nightly perspective we can all agree on. Koppel made clear the world he longs for: “…we are no longer a national audience receiving news from a handful of trusted gatekeepers. We’re now a million or more clusters of consumers harvesting information from like-minded providers.”

Interview with Jed Babbin on America at War and the State of the Union

In an exclusive interview with Accuracy in Media last week on Veteran’s Day, former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense and bestselling author Jed Babbin said that now that the Republicans have made big gains in Congress, they will have to deliver or else face the same fate the Democrats met earlier this month. And he is warning that the Obama administration is doing damage to the military, and may not be up to the many national security challenges that the United States currently faces.

NBC Favors Rich Over Poor

While NBC has once again put itself in the service of the Obama administration, this time on education, they are both unwittingly making the case for more choices for parents desperate to get their children out of dead-end public schools. But is there a reason other than liberal bias that explains NBC’s willingness to serve as an outlet for Obama Administration propaganda?

Interview with Former Sen. Bob Smith, Now with AIM

Bob Smith is a former two-term U.S. Senator, a Navy veteran, and now a Special Contributor to Accuracy in Media. Last week, following the elections, we discussed his fascinating career in the public arena, and his thoughts on a number of topics, including the meaning of the elections, the impact and role of the Tea Party movement, the media, and challenges and opportunities for the new Congress.

Olbermann’s Back

Keith Olbermann is back after his indefinite suspension turned out to be just two days. TVNewsers sources, which I cited last week, were mistaken at best when they quoted “insiders” as having said he “won’t be back.”

Interview with Diane Dimond on “White House Gatecrashers”

The ongoing story of the Salahis, the so-called White House gatecrashers, appears on the surface to be a tabloid story about some social-climbing status seekers who, with the help of the Bravo Network, were able to crash President Obama’s first White House state dinner last November. But as I pointed out in a special report last December, there was much more to the story. Could the Secret Service have been so incompetent or careless to allow people into such an event who were not on a list? Why was President Obama contradicting his pledge of transparency by exercising executive privilege to keep the key people in a position to know from testifying before a Congressional committee looking into the affair? And were the media once again covering for Obama by viciously going after the Salahis, who were easy targets because of their style of living large while stiffing a number of small businesses, as was well documented at the time.

Interview with Retired Lt. Col. Buzz Patterson on Obama, Clinton and National Security

In an exclusive interview with Accuracy in Media, Retired Lt. Col. Robert “Buzz” Patterson says that President Obama is very “dangerous to our military, and to the national security of this nation.” He says that Obama’s refuses to “acknowledge the fact that we’re fighting a very extreme element of Islam.” And he cites the National Security Strategy Policy of the United States, which is President Obama’s national security policy, in which “he does not, one time, use the words jihad, Islam, Muslim, extremism, fundamentalism, terrorism—in fact, quite the opposite: He identifies the greatest national security threat to America being global warming.”

Obama Loses Media in Last-Ditch Smear Campaign

It is rare when The Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily, The Washington Post and The New York Times all agree on something. But President Obama’s attack on the Chamber of Commerce—for supposedly spending “foreign money” on the campaign—caused all of them to cry foul.

Interview with Rochelle Schweizer on “The Disturbing Truth About Nancy Pelosi”

With midterm elections less than three weeks away, a blockbuster new book has come out on Speaker Nancy Pelosi, which to no one’s surprise is being ignored by the mainstream media. Recent polls have shown that the nation is not too happy with Speaker Pelosi, which could lead to dramatic changes in the new Congress that will convene in January. The most recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows that Pelosi is viewed very positive or somewhat positive by only 22% of the respondents, while 50% view her negatively or very negatively.

Interview with Garland Tucker on “The High Tide of American Conservatism”

Accuracy in Media recently interviewed Garland S. Tucker III, who has written a fascinating new history book that has great relevancy today. The book, entitled The High Tide of American Conservatism: Davis, Coolidge and the 1924 Election, looks at the people and the times of the 1920s, and finds that they were debating conservatism versus progressivism, and cutting or raising tax rates and government spending. Radio was coming in to its own, as electronic media was just starting to show its potential impact on presidential elections.

How Obama and NBC Favor the Rich Over the Poor

While NBC has once again put itself in the service of the Obama administration, this time on education, they are both unwittingly making the case for more choices for parents desperate to get their children out of dead-end public schools. But is there a reason other than liberal bias that explains NBC’s willingness to serve as an outlet for Obama Administration propaganda?

Interview with Sally Pipes on ObamaCare at Six Months

“I would say the mainstream media, of course, always likes to increase the role of government in our lives, and Obama, Pelosi, and Reid believe that government can make decisions for the American people better than we can make for ourselves."

Interview with Author and Journalist Erik Rush

It was Erik Rush whose work put Jeremiah Wright, President Obama’s pastor of 20 years, into the forefront of media debate during the 2008 Presidential elections.

Interview with Claudia Rosett on Middle East and Ground Zero Mosque

You can also download the MP3. Accuracy in Media recently interviewed Claudia Rosett, the director of the Investigative Reporting Project at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, about Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Israel and the “Ground Zero Mosque” for AIM’s weekly BlogTalkRadio show, Take AIM.

Time and Times Again Show More Bias Against Israel

In textbook examples, both Time magazine and The New York Times have once again shown their hostility toward Israel. Bias comes in many shapes and forms. It can be through misleading headlines, location of a story within the publication, selective use of photos, facts omitted, sources sought and choice of words. A couple of glaring examples from this past week highlight such bias against Israel.

Serious Questions Raised About Obama Tactics in 2008 Election

Recently AIM interviewed Gigi Gaston, director of the documentary film, “We Will Not Be Silenced.” The film documents voter intimidation and corruption by forces working for then-candidate Barack Obama at Democratic precinct caucuses and state conventions during the 2008 Presidential primary. The filmmaker is surprising in that she is a lifelong Democrat, whose grandfather was the mayor of Boston and later the governor of Massachusetts, and she is a Hollywood screenwriter.

Lawrence O’Donnell: Not Ready for Primetime?

Lawrence O’Donnell is in dire need of a fact checker. O’Donnell, the former aide to New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and a producer and writer for part of the run of “West Wing” on NBC, is getting his own show on MSNBC this fall. He has been a frequent guest host for Keith Olbermann, and unfortunately for him, it seems like he must be using Olbermann’s fact checkers.

RaceGate?

Sometimes events converge into one of those teachable moments. That is the case with the Shirley Sherrod story breaking within a day of the Journolist scandal. This moment turned into a frenetic week of accusations, reactions, analysis and a lot of anger. The Journolist scandal revealed a dark underbelly of mostly left-wing opinion journalists acting as political operatives in ways that may have contributed to the climate which has spawned RaceGate.

Mystery of TWA Flight 800 Lives On

The last active lawsuit seeking to get to the truth of what happened back on July 17, 1996, when TWA 800 blew up off the coast of Long Island, has basically reached the end of the line. For the 14th anniversary of the tragic event, which killed 230 people, I interviewed Ray Lahr and his attorney John Clarke on AIM’s weekly BlogTalkRadio show, Take AIM.