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It’s an old New York Times labeling trick: Find the bad guys, and stamp the “conservative” label on them -- even if they are Soviet Communists -- the enemy of U.S. conservatives during the Cold War. The Times insists on describing Muslim migrants, in the news for sex attacks in Germany, as hailing from “conservative” societies (then turning around and accusing Western conservatives of “Islamophobia”). Reporter Melissa Eddy wrote three articles from Germany, two on the sexual assaults by Muslim refugees in Cologne and other cities, one on the republication of Mein Kampf. In all three stories, Eddy strangely managed to put the bad actors on the “conservative” or “far right” side of the political spectrum.

My New Year's Eve interview with CNN came with a Clinton defender who insisted every Clinton sex charge was "phony" and "disgraceful" and dragged around by the radical right.

Phony charges? Really? Really? President Clinton himself stepped in front of the cameras to say that he had never had sex with “that woman, Ms. Lewinsky”…and later came to the nation and admitted he lied.  The phony here was Mr. Clinton.

Ooops. CNN’s Anderson Cooper seemingly let slip on Thursday night what anyone who has a watched a presidential press conference already knows, but journalists are usually loath to admit: The White House press corps favor President Obama’s policies and so don’t challenge him on them. Following CNN’s “town hall” on guns with Obama, Cooper explained his approach: “I wanted him to actually address people who disagree with him, not just people who agree with him that so often happens at, you know, a presidential news conference.”

On Friday, New York Times entertainment reporters Michael Cieply and Brooks Barnes lamented “the dreaded Oscar-season truth squad. Once again, confrontations between an expanding field of reality-based movies and a growing pack of watchdogs, mostly of the armchair variety, have been turning the annual awards ritual into a brutal game of ‘gotcha.’”

The latest gushing edition of Politico Magazine released on Wednesday entitled “The Obama Issue: A Special Report on a Historic Presidency,” was loaded with one article after another largely celebrating the impact of President Obama’s waning administration.

Andrea Mitchell touted how "the [Bill] Clinton-[Tony] Blair relationship was, indeed, special" on Friday's NBC Nightly News, as she reported on the release of transcripts of conversations between the two former leaders during the former's presidency. Mitchell spotlighted how "Blair calls Clinton 'mate.' Clinton offers to babysit Blair's son. They chat about everything from Pink Panther movies to the tragedy of Princess Diana." She barely mentioned the Monica Lewinsky scandal during her report. The journalist also played up how Clinton's "legacy is relevant again, because [Hillary] is running for president."

Yesterday at NewsBusters, Ken Shepherd noted how quickly and gleefully the New York Times jumped ("an impressive sprint capping off a year of solid job growth") on December's relatively strong jobs report.

The Associated Press joined the parade — "US EMPLOYERS HIRE AT BLISTERING PACE, DEFYING GLOBAL TRENDS" – and kept its story as its lead in its Business "Top Stories" until late afternoon. While that treatment was defensible, the absence of the wire service's terse coverage of the government's disturbing wholesale sales and inventories report from the "Top 10" roster wasn't. Clearly, the good news stays, while the bad news gets memory-holed at the Administration's Press.