ActRight

In these days of news cycles measured in minutes, if not seconds, the Katie Couric scandal may seem almost as stale as Katie Couric herself. But bear with me. It’s a big deal, and not just because she lied. But let’s begin with the lie. #ad#Serving as host and executive producer for an anti-gun “news” documentary, Under the Gun, Couric held a focus group with members of a gun-rights group called the Virginia Citizens Defense League. She asked the attendees, “If there are no background checks for gun purchasers, how do you prevent felons or terrorists from walking into, say, a licensed gun dealer and purchasing a gun?” In reality the group had any number of immediate and thoughtful responses (whether you agree with them or not). But what ended up in the final video was something very different. For eight very long seconds, Couric’s question hung in the air as the members of the focus group were depicted as dumbstruck, some with their heads hanging low, as if this question was not only unanswerable, but exposed something shameful. Couric and her team achieved this through simple video editing. By taking footage from elsewhere in the session and splicing it after the question, they made it seem like the group was struck mute by the brilliance and moral power of the question. The problem is that the camera and the microphone are very often less objective than the pen or the keyboard. The simplest way to illustrate the nature of this lie is to imagine if a print reporter had been there instead of a camera. Let’s say I’m that reporter, watching the focus group in real time from a corner of the room. Now imagine that in my account of the meeting, instead of reporting that the group answered immediately and energetically, I reported: “When Couric asked her question about background checks, a long and shamefaced collective silence fell over the whole group. Not one of these purported gun-rights activists knew how to respond.” There is simply no way a reasonable person can deny that would be a lie. This incident is being cited by many on the right as a perfect example of media bias — and it is. Couric is a partisan hypocrite. She criticized the undercover videos of Planned Parenthood executives talking about selling baby parts as deceptively edited, even though their editing was tame compared to Couric’s (and the Center for Medical Progress had released the raw video of their interviews as well). But there’s something else worth noting here: TV itself is a biased medium. In the early days of television — and before that, radio — the hope was that technology could take out the middleman-journalist and provide “objective” reporting. Just place a microphone or a camera at the heart of the action, and the audience will get that You Are There feeling. The problem is that the camera and the microphone are very often less objective than the pen or the keyboard. Worse, electronic journalists often hide behind the facade of technology and the sensory immersion of the audience, as a way to fake immediacy and intimacy. Writing requires reflection; the writer must balance competing and often contradictory facts and opinions. It demands of the reader active judgment as well. Lord knows it’s not perfect, but in many respects it’s more honest than journalism that pretends to let you see and hear the truth with your own eyes and ears. You Are There, by the way, was a radio and then TV series (which was hosted by Walter Cronkite) put out by CBS News from the late 1940s to the early 1950s. It was dedicated to re-enacting important moments in American history, as if they had been covered by TV journalists. But one thing the audience knew: It was a re-enactment. Today, all of reality TV is at least as fake as You Are There — arguably more so, since at least You Are There tried to stick to established historical facts. Reality TV, on the other hand, makes up facts and pretends they are real. In this it is perhaps the medium’s most authentic form: It’s just “real-ish” enough to make the fakery more emotionally compelling. This is the more lasting lesson of the Couric scandal: Reality TV has conquered all. As a society, we want to be entertained far more than we want to be informed, which is why these scandals vanish the instant they become boring. It’s also why Katie Couric is more a reality-TV star than a real journalist. — Jonah Goldberg is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior editor of National Review​. You can write to him by e-mail at [email protected], or via Twitter @JonahNRO. © 2016 Tribune Content Agency, LLC

Obama Cites Scripture To Defend School Bathrooms Rule

Guest essay by Eric Worrall A study published in the Journal of Hymenoptera finds that Australian bee populations expanded with the end of the last ice age, then plateaued around 6000 years ago. Th…

Trump Rally Attendees Beaten, Spit on, Egged, and attacked on Streets By Rioting Leftists / Democrats.

Donald Trump has become the standard-bearer of the Republican party. Yet there are so many ways Trump is unfit to lead the free world. If you are voting in the GOP primary Tuesday, write in Ronald Reagan for president.

Milo Yiannopoulos protestors at University of California Irvine - 6-2-2016 for THE DANGEROUS FAGGOT TOUR SOCIAL JUSTICE IS CANCER UCI UCI UCI Milo Yiannopoul...

A judge has granted police extra time to investigate all election fraud in South Thanet, where the Conservative party snatched victory from UKIP denying Nigel Farage a seat in Parliament

In a little-watched case in the Midwest, the Obama administration's Medicare regulators were dealt an embarrassing blow this week by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. Judges ruled that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) improperly pursued an $800,000 fraud fine against homebound therapy provider Caring Hearts, which services Medicare patients, by applying new regulations after-the-fact. The court wrote that CMS was unfamiliar with its own regulations and is struggling to keep up with the furious pace of its own rule making. Judge Gorsuch writes: [P]erhaps it comes as little surprise that it arises in the Medicare context. Medicare is, to say the least, a complicated program. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) estimates that it issues literally thousands of new or revised guidance documents (not pages) every single year, guidance providers must follow exactingly if they wish to provide health care services to the elderly and disabled under Medicare's umbrella. Currently, about 37,000 separate guidance documents can be found on CMS's website — and even that doesn't purport to be a complete inventory... But how did CMS wind up confused about its own law? It began this way. Caring Hearts provides physical therapy and skilled nursing services to homebound Medicare patients... Of course, any Medicare provider may only charge the government for services that are reasonable and necessary... But Congress hasn't exactly been clear about who qualifies as homebound or what services qualify as reasonable and necessary. So CMS has developed its own rules on both subjects — rules the agency has (repeatedly) revised and expanded over time. In a recent audit, CMS purported to find that Caring Hearts provided services to at least a handful of patients who didn't qualify as homebound or for whom the services rendered weren't reasonable and necessary. As a result, CMS ordered Caring Hearts to repay the government over $800,000. The trouble is, in reaching its conclusions CMS applied the wrong law. As we'll see, the agency didn't apply the regulations in force in 2008 when Caring Hearts provided the services in dispute. Instead, it applied considerably more onerous regulations the agency adopted only years later. Regulations that Caring Hearts couldn't have known about at the time it provided its services.

Serial #: VTR 4568, No. 26 Date: 1964 Event: 1964 Presidential Campaign Location: Unknown Credit: Democratic National Committee Rights Info: No usage fees. U...

The European Commission Wants You To Log Into Social Media Accounts With Govt-Issued ID Cards

Obama Admits: I Don't Like Using Donald Trump’s Name

Conservative Party MEP Sajjad Karim has said that UK Independence Party (UKIP) leader Nigel Farage "would have been dealt with" during his Brexit tour around the United Kingdom, were it not for the cameras present

Skip the eco-guilt on this Earth Day — we largely have clean air and clean water, says author and fossil-fuels advocate Alex Epstein.

Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump was greeted by several dozen demonstrators in Sacramento: "America Was Never Great!!!"

If there is one thing Bernie Sanders is trying to avoid it's comparisons between his brand of socialism and what is happening in Venezuela.

Donald Trump supporters exiting his rally in San Jose were sitting ducks for hundreds of agitators posted outside.

Seattle University has apparently caved to the demands of student activists, putting a besieged dean on administrative leave after protesters claimed the liberal-arts curriculum focused too much on classical Western history and philosophy.

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — A group of protesters attacked Donald Trump supporters who were leaving the presidential candidate's rally in San Jose on Thursday night. A dozen or more people were punched, at least one person…

As Anderson Cooper interviewed Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson on Tuesday's AC360, the CNN host brought up running mate Bill Weld's hyperbolic assertion likening Donald Trump's position on deporting illegal immigrants to the treatment of Jews by Nazis. Cooper: "Your running mate, Bill Weld, has compared Trump's deportation plan to Nazis' policies against Jews. Do you agree with that?"

EXCLUSIVE: Hillary Clinton Posted Names of Hidden Intelligence Officials On Her Email

Hillary University: Bill Clinton Bagged $16.46 Million from For-Profit College as State Dept. Funneled $55 Million Back

The emails are scheduled to be released before both party conventions.

Everyone’s out to get Donald Trump.

(WASHINGTON, D.C., 5/25/16) – The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today lau...

An interactive tool created by Google was designed to encourage Syrian rebels and help bring down the