The Boston terror attack allows one easy conclusion – the Old Media is not afraid to jump the gun on its reporting. The AP could have checked its facts before incorrectly reporting that a bomber was in custody last week; a simple phone call to the police or FBI would have cleared up any confusion. Probably in a race against its competition, the OM did not check its facts and endangered Bostonians who may have thought the threat was over. Other news sources ran the AP’s error, but with a caveat that they could not confirm its accuracy. The OM is quick on the trigger, but not in implicating Islam.

NPR this week fell over itself to avoid implicating Islam in this terror bombing. Even after the suspects were known to be Muslim, NPR constantly guarded itself by reminding listeners there was no reason to believe radical Islam was at work. As it turned out, the terrorists fit the classic mold. They were rich and well educated, as are most Islamic terrorists, including the 9/11 hijackers. They fell under the influence of a radical Imam with connections to terrorist organizations (in this case the Muslim Brotherhood). One of them travelled abroad for terrorist training. While a pathetic writer for Salon may have wished for a white right-wing terrorist, the Tsarnaevs were more of the same from western civilization’s persistent enemy. Even today, the New York Times is clinging to the notion the Tsarnaevs acted alone, as if young men spontaneously build bombs out of pressure cookers and conceal them in trash cans.

The OM reported falsehoods that it could have easily checked, but it did not report that every sign pointed toward radical Islam. The OM does not want to offend Muslims, especially the ones who behead reporters, but also it does not want to engender bias in the public against Islam. The OM is protecting the public from itself through such circumspection. The OM knows that the streets of Jakarta are filled with Muslims who want to lead peaceful lives and raise their nation from poverty. The vast majority of Muslims are without doubt peaceful, but even so, millions of them want to kill Americans indiscriminately.

The OM should ask itself why it wants to protect Islam’s image. The OM is filled with progressives who embrace dismantling the establishment to build a better world. Islam is anti-progressive; it is a set of laws that can never be changed or broken down. Contrary to its position on Islam, the OM hates Christian faiths and goes out of its way to report every Christian’s failures. NPR, for example, reported that Olympic bomber Eric Rudolph was a “Christian Identity extremist,” but in fact he is agnostic. NPR, however will not call the Ft. Hood terrorist, Nidal Malik Hasan, an Islamic terrorist or extremist even though he is one beyond doubt.

The OM should also know that reporters are the first people rounded up by totalitarians. The Sean Penns and Oliver Stones of the world will also find their sympathy for radicals poorly rewarded. Terrorist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood probably have little tolerance for their purported allies like Lewis Farrakhan. These useful idiots should stop running flack for the very people who would imprison them.

The story of Boston is that Islam has a problem. Imams with terrorist ties such as Boston’s Basyouny Nehela are a serious threat. The OM does a disservice to public safety by failing to expose these radicals, but it is also failing Islam. Islam needs more reasons to purge Imams who would radicalize young men and make them terrorists. As long as the OM deludes the public into thinking radical Islam is not a problem and the Tsarnaevs are aberrations, the attacks will continue.

Last week famed film critic, Roger Ebert, passed away, having long suffered from cancer. Vitriol against the dead is unseemly, and Shout Bits does not want to lower itself to the leftists who inevitably will denigrate the late PM Margaret Thatcher, one of the true greats of the 20^th Century. Still, Ebert’s story cannot be told without understanding his rabid partisan leftism. Especially after he was robbed of the ability to speak, Ebert was famous for his anti-Republican and anti-capitalist screeds. As with Walter Cronkite, Ebert’s role has been supplanted by a more egalitarian system that far better serves the public.

Ebert and his partner Gene Siskel were famous for their PBS program where they gave thumbs ‘up’ or ‘down’ to movies. This was clever for many reasons – a movie goer can only choose to go or not to go to a movie, so a binary review made sense. Also, Siskel and Ebert often disagreed with their thumbs and would hash out their differences. Movie goers thereby got a sense of why the critics felt as they did. A single review was unreliable and often reflected the critic’s snobbery and bias. Two reviews offered more perspective, which made Siskel and Ebert the tops of their profession.

Siskel was the intellectual with a taste for drama while Ebert was lustier with a taste for action. However both of them, along with most Old Media were snobs who thought patriotism or faith was for hacks. Ebert’s review of Atlas Shrugged I, for example, spends the first paragraph insulting Ayn Rand and her followers. Only after that irrelevant snark did he dissect the movie. Ebert was a leftist who could never give Shrugged a review on its own terms, and he trashed it. Yes, the production values were not Scorseseian, and the plot was dull, but any Rand fan would expect that. Ebert and the OM in general were incapable of speaking to the people who were considering actually seeing the movie. Telling leftists, elitists, and popcorn flick aficionados not to see Shrugged was hardly a vital public service.

Enter the internet and Rotten Tomatoes. Just as the internet turned ordinary Joes into pundits (guilty as charged), anybody with an opinion became a movie critic. Rotten Tomatoes reports that 11% of OM critics liked Shrugged while 72% of amateur critics recommended it. The difference is that the OM is trained to reject ideas outside of Columbia University’s leftist circles. Rotten Tomatoes lets people consider opinions from critics like themselves, who are usually critics not friendly with Weather Underground terrorists.

While citizen journalists largely supplement OM reporting by exposing bias and lies, citizen film critics have completely eclipsed the OM’s influence. Very few trustworthy OM reviewers remain, and they certainly are outnumbered by the tagline whores who praise Hollywood’s most terrible hacks. Instead, movie goers get quicker, better, and more targeted reviews from their peers.

So, RIP Mr. Ebert; you had a tough life with suffering nobody would take lightly. You were misguided with regard to your Chicago-style extreme leftism, but you were hardly the most powerful man to confuse Marx with liberty. You were clever and likeable in your reviews, but the march of progress has rendered your profession irrelevant.