Syria

At the Associated Press late Thursday morning, Ken Dilanian, the wire service's intelligence writer, did a marvelous job of covering up the essence of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper's Worldwide Threat Assessment testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. The trouble is that if he were doing his job as our Founders anticipated he would when they gave the nation's press…

As of Wednesday morning, NBC's morning and evening newscasts have yet to cover ISIS's kidnapping of up to 150 Christians from northeastern Syria on Monday. On Wednesday, Today yawned at this latest example of the Islamic extremist group's persecution of Christians. Instead, they devoted 1 minute and 13 seconds to a Slate writer's advice to parents on giving their children allowances.

Apropos of President Obama’s refusal to use the terms “Islamic extremism” or “radical Islam,” Saletan opines, “If we’re going to start calling out religious and political groups for extremism, we could start at home with Republicans. Too many of them spew animus. Too many foment sectarianism. Too many sit by, or make excuses, as others appeal to tribalism. If Obama were to treat them the way they…

Early Tuesday morning, the terrorist group ISIS entered a village in northeastern Syrian and kidnapped droves of Christians with estimates ranging from 70 to as many as 150 people. For viewers that tuned into English-language network NBC and Spanish-language networks Telemundo and Univision for their Tuesday evening newscasts, however, they were left completely in the dark on this story as it…

Friday's NBC Nightly News surprisingly (and perhaps, unwittingly) contradicted President Obama and his administration's talking point on combating extremism – that providing "job opportunities for these people" will discourage Muslims from joining terrorist groups. Correspondent Katy Tur's report on three British teenagers who may have traveled to Syria to join ISIS featured a counterterrorism…

Vox writer Max Fisher argues that Obama “has veered so far into downplaying Islamist extremism that he appears at times to refuse to acknowledge its existence at all, or has referred to it as violent extremism. While he has correctly identified economic and political factors that give rise to extremism, he has appeared to downplay or outright deny an awkward but important fact: religion plays an…

Anderson Cooper spotlighted The Atlantic's Graeme Wood's thorough article on ISIS on his Wednesday program. Cooper wondered, "President Obama...said we're at war with people who have perverted Islam. The question, though, is: is that really true?" The anchor asked Wood about Mr. Obama's statement, and he gave a blunt reply: "Well, you know, he doesn't really have the authority to say that. I don'…

On Friday's NBC Nightly News, Richard Engel zeroed in on an ISIS atrocity that hasn't gotten enough media attention – its sexual enslavement of women from Iraqi minority groups, especially the Yazidis. Engel interviewed two Yazidi women who escaped from their Islamist captors, and spotlighted that "ISIS is reviving the barbaric tradition of the slave trade." He later bluntly added, "There's a…

The question that came to mind while listening to President Obama's remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast -- where have I heard this before? Conservative columnist and author Charles Krauthammer provided a helpful reminder when he appeared on Hugh Hewitt's radio show yesterday. For Obama to compared the current-day atrocities committed by radical Muslims on a daily basis around the world…

In an interview aired on Monday's NBC Today, President Obama discovered that speaking to an actual journalist was a bit tougher than having YouTube celebrities lob softballs at him. In the exchange – conducted prior to the Super Bowl on Sunday – co-host Savannah Guthrie grilled the President over his handling of the war on terrorism: "You said in your State of the Union that American leadership…

While NBC News was up to its usual business in praising and defending President Obama both before and after his State of the Union speech, chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel emerged as a rare voice that instead took to the liberal network’s airwaves to condemn the President’s rhetoric on foreign policy as both unrealistic and, in many cases, simply not true.  After being asked by anchor…

On Fox News's "The Five" last week, the panel had some fun coming up with alternative songs and performers U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry could have employed in his visit to France last week. The video which follows starts with Greg Gutfeld exposing how the song used — "You've Got a Friend" as delivered by James Taylor, who was having a hard time even keeping his microphone properly…

The nation's establishment press is virtually ignoring the existence of horrifying and officially approved Islamic State videos showing the executions of accused homosexuals and adulterers.  A search this morning at Google News on "Islamic State gay" (with "Islamic State" in quotes, showing duplicates) for items appearing since January 14 returned 83 results. Roughly 30 of them are directly…

Establishment press reporting has all too often been about perpetuating a narrative, even long after it has been proven false, than conveying facts and truth. Anyone arguing that 2014 has been one of the worst years ever for this growing trend won't get an argument here. An Associated Press poll about the top stories of the year got responses from 85 editors at subscribing AP outlets. Although…