Washington Post media blogger Erik Wemple has cried foul against a New York Observer article titled “The Tyranny and Lethargy of the Times Editorial Page." Wemple is right that this article by Ken Kurson is loaded with negative attacks from anonymous Times “insiders,” but stops short of saying this is exactly what the Times (and the Post) do to politicians they don’t like. (See the Vicki Iseman debacle of 2008.)
But perhaps the funniest part is after finding “17 problems” with the Observer article, he writes he cannot find any problem with people finding columnist Thomas Friedman is a tiresome blowhard:
Erik Wemple
By Tim Graham | February 9, 2014 | 8:19 AM EST
By Noel Sheppard | December 11, 2013 | 5:26 PM EST
"The journalistic bond between The Post and MSNBC just grew a bit stronger, as the paper’s opinion section announced that MSNBC host Rachel Maddow will be writing a monthly column."
So began Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple's announcement Wednesday concerning the addition of the perilously liberal Maddow to the Post opinion page.
By Tim Graham | December 3, 2013 | 7:04 AM EST
CNN anchor Chris Cuomo must surely know there is no easier way to avoid a conflict of interest than letting one of his "New Day" co-anchors interview his brother, New York Governor and potential 2016 presidential candidate Andrew Cuomo. But acting like a CNN bigfoot after just months at the network, Cuomo insists on interviewing Cuomo (repeatedly). On Monday, he had an e-mail fit with Lloyd Grove of The Daily Beast after he interviewed Gov. Cuomo about the train derailment in New York. That's six days after he interviewed his brother for being named "Sexiest Fifty-something" by People magazine.
“Obviously I did the intv because it was non political, and frankly, I invite the criticism—because it exposes the hollowness of a lot of what is out there,” he began.
CNN 'Reliable Sources' Guest Host Claims Calling Obama Racist Is Somehow Equivalent to Bashir's Sick Attack on Palin
By Tim Graham | November 25, 2013 | 7:46 AM EST Eric Deggans of National Public Radio sat in the guest-host chair on CNN's "Reliable Sources" show on Sunday, and pressed Amy Holmes of TheBlaze TV several times on how she should be more forgiving of Martin Bashir's outrageous remarks about Sarah Palin. First, he suggested, "Martin Bashir apologized for his comments. He reached out to the Palin family.Is there really a problem here? Or are competitors and partisan people try to make an issue being made out of something that has already passed?"
One doesn't have to be a partisan to suggest an on-air apology might seem like a weak punishment. Holmes cited that MSNBC removed David Shuster from the air (never to return) for suggesting Hillary Clinton "pimped out" her daughter Chelsea on the campaign trail. So Deggans turned the issue to Glenn Beck, who Holmes works for: [See video after jump. MP3 audio here.]
WashPost Media Critic Honors MSNBC's Rachel Maddow As 'Clear Winner of the Cable-News-Host Literary Prize'
By Tim Graham | November 10, 2013 | 8:27 AM EST
Washington Post media blogger Erik Wemple read through a stack of books by cable-news hosts for a Sunday Outlook piece, and declared “MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow is the clear winner of the cable-news-host literary prize” for her book “Drift.”
On Sunday’s front page, The Post called it a “blab lit review” and called it “A survey of the many cable big mouths who have stuffed it between hard covers." Wemple accurately captured the contempt the liberal media has for Fox hosts:
Hypocrisy Alert: WashPost Puts Race-related Lawsuits on Page One -- Unless It's a Lawsuit Against The Post
By Tim Graham | October 13, 2013 | 7:02 PM EDT Media outlets see themselves as brave souls reporting on racial discrimination inside greedy corporations. On June 12, The Washington Post made a front-page story out of a suit against BMW and Dollar General by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for “indirectly discriminating against African Americans by using criminal background checks to screen out workers.”
At FrontPage magazine, conservative freelancer Evan Gahr reports the Post is “quieter than deaf mutes about a lawsuit alleging race discrimination at their own paper.” This is just like NPR's on-air silence when it was sued by correspondent Sunni Khalid for racial and anti-Muslim discrimination in 1997. The blog Fishbowl DC covered the contrast, and then said that contrast is interesting, but tried to underline just how totally understandable the Post blackout on itself was:
Gruesome Opportunist Piers Morgan Promotes New Gun Control Book Just Two Days After Navy Yard Shooting
By Randy Hall | September 20, 2013 | 12:57 PM EDT The announcement for Piers Morgan's new book, Shooting Straight: Guns, Gays, God, and George Clooney, states that the liberal host of a Cable News Network weeknight program “is one of the most talked-about, controversial figures in the media today.”
Even though Morgan has been engaged in a years-long crusade to implement extreme gun-control laws, neither he nor his publisher, Simon & Schuster, apparently had any qualms about pushing the book on Wednesday, only two days after the Navy Yard shooting that left 13 people dead.
By Tim Graham | September 6, 2013 | 2:05 PM EDT
Washington Post media blogger Erik Wemple recalled Daily Beast boss Tina Brown hate-tweeting her former Washington bureau chief Howard Kurtz: “am I forgetting something or didn’t I fire you for serial inaccuracy?”
“That was a bit of classlessness that simply wasn’t going to go unpunished,” Wemple wrote. “And now the journalism gods have spoken, via a correction that is available on NPR.” On a Thursday interview on Morning Edition, Brown made a very dramatic error, falsely claiming a pregnancy by rape of a journalist in Somalia, as anchor Renee Montagne announced on Friday's show:
Even The New Yorker Admits 'Conservatives Are Far Less Visible on MSNBC Than Liberals Are on Fox News'
By Tim Graham | August 28, 2013 | 8:12 AM EDT Even the lefties at The New Yorker magazine know that Fox offers more space to liberals than MSNBC does to conservatives. Washington Post media blogger Erik Wemple's headline was "MSNBC: Must-agree TV."
The New Yorker's Kelefa Sanneh (for eight years a music critic at The New York Times) profiled MSNBC and declared point blank that "Conservatives are far less visible on MSNBC than liberals are on Fox News." He absolutely nailed how Phil Griffin's shows prefer Republicans who trash the right-wingers as fanatics:
By Brent Bozell | August 10, 2013 | 8:11 AM EDT
The Washington Post is a legend in the minds of the Washington elite, so its financial decline has caused quiet panic. As NPR media reporter David Folkenflik put it, “You think of stories like the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, these are all stories where The Washington Post led the nation's understanding, the world's understanding of some major issues.”
Outside the liberal media, you wonder how long Post fans can wallow in their Nixon-crumbling polyester “glory days” in the early 1970s. But nostalgia ruled as the Graham family sold the Post to Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon.com. “Now he is being credited as a white knight with deep pockets helping to save one of this country's great newspapers,” oozed NBC reporter Tom Costello.
By Noel Sheppard | July 30, 2013 | 10:31 AM EDT
When the New York Times Magazine published an 8,000-word puff piece in April about Anthony Weiner and wife Huma Abedin, the media predictably applauded with all three broadcast networks gleefully referring to the piece to assist in the sext-crazed politician's rehabilitation.
Adding insult to injury, the article's author Jonathan Van Meter - who is a contributing editor to Vogue and New York magazine - told the Washington Post's Erik Wemple Monday, "Never even occurred to me to ask" if Weiner was still sexting.
WashPost's Media Blogger Bemoans 'Tedious Outrage Machine' Upset with Rolling Stone's Tsarnaev Cover
By Ken Shepherd | July 17, 2013 | 5:53 PM EDT Updated below: Wemple doubles down | Are you genuinely offended and angered by Rolling Stone magazine putting a glamour-style photograph of Boston bombing suspect Dzokhar Tsarnaev on the cover of its August 1 edition, plugging its corresponding cover story, "The Bomber," by promising readers a look at "How a Popular, Promising Student Was Failed by His Family, Fell Into Radical Islam and Became a Monster"?
You are? Well, you're certainly not alone, but Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple thinks you're just another cog in "our country's tedious outrage machine." From his July 17 blog post filed shortly before 11 a.m. and headlined, "To Rolling Stone detractors: Please":