Welcome to the Political Reporting 101 class, boys and girls. Please break out your notebooks because today we will be covering examples of poor political reporting. And the first such example is this report from CNN. It is about the Senator Arlen Specter campaign which is so worried about their prospects in next year's primary election that they are already running attack ads against someone who isn't even an announced candidate. Your first assignment will be to discover the name of the person that CNN reporter Lauren Kornreich neglected to interview in her story:
Arlen Specter
Cramer Breaks Ranks: Calls 'Bolshevik' Democrats Card Check Legislation 'Anti-Business, Earnings-Destroying'
By Jeff Poor | April 4, 2009 | 5:08 PM EDT Although CNBC "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer has backed off his hyperbolic attacks on President Barack Obama ever since his "Daily Show" appearance, he's shown that he's not afraid to take on the Democratic-controlled Congress.
So, to give credit where credit is due, the "Mad Money" host dedicated an entire segment to the Employee Free Choice Act, aka card check and how its passage by Congress could be detrimental to Wal-Mart's (NYSE:WMT) stock price on his April 3 program. And during the segment, Cramer used three references to Soviet/Russian communism to describe the Democrat effort pushing card check.
"Right now, in Congress - they're getting ready for what is essentially a referendum on Wal-Mart," Cramer said. "And the referendum's name is the Employee Free Choice Act, also known by slang as card check - a bill that will make it much easier for workers to form unions and much harder for employers to get in their way."
By Kathleen McKinley | March 2, 2009 | 1:25 PM EST
On Thursday I interviewed Sen. John Cornyn, head of the National Republican Sentorial Committee. When I asked him about the NRSC running someone against Sen. Arlen Specter in 2010, given the anger many Republicans feel about Specter's vote on the stimulus bill, Cornyn's answer was basically that he would rather have someone voting with him 80% of the time, rather than a liberal Democrat who would vote with him 0% of the time.
Well, it looks like Sen. Cornyn might be able to get someone who will vote with him more than 80% of the time. Former Congressman Pat Toomey, the current Club for Growth President, announced this morning on Bobby Gunther Walsh's 1-On-1 Show, WAEB, 790AM, that a Primary challenge to Sen. Arlen Specter is now 'back on the table."
Given Specter's abysmal poll numbers in Pennsylvania right now, this is interesting, to say the least.
On Sunday the Associated Press reported these words from Vice President Biden:
By Tom Blumer | February 17, 2009 | 12:02 AM EST
If you haven't figured it out yet, the fact that lawmakers in Washington who voted for the mislabeled "stimulus" bill championed by Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid did so without reading it, let alone understanding it, means that in the coming weeks (or months?) we'll be learning about all manner of items in the legislation that "nobody" knew about. But that didn't stop House and Senate majorities from passing the legislation. My educated guess is that you won't hear much about these buried provisions from Old Media, because they're largely designed as stealth advances of longtime liberal agenda items.
Remember "net neutrality"? It's back, after probably a year or so of neglect.
By Jeff Poor | February 9, 2009 | 7:51 PM EST
It's a question we've all been waiting to hear answered. Unfortunately, it took a conservative talk radio host to ask it and didn't come from the mainstream media.
In an interview with Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, Pa., on Feb. 9, talk show host Laura Ingraham asked why he and Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins are the only three out of 229 Republican members of Congress to support the stimulus. She inquired if it might have had something to do with being invited to the White House by President Barack Obama.
"Is it nice to be wined and dined at the White House?" Ingraham asked. "And, you're treated pretty well when you're a Republican bucking other Republicans, right Senator?"
Specter told Ingraham he wasn't being "wined and dined" by the Obama White House. Specter wasn't on the guest list of one infamous White House party that included several Republican and Democrat members of Congress, which included cocktails and wagyu beef. However, Specter did attend a Super Bowl party hosted by the White House on Feb. 1 as the only Republican member in attendance.
By Noel Sheppard | February 7, 2009 | 12:25 PM EST
Roughly five months after Joe Biden informed the nation that paying higher taxes is patriotic, it now appears radically increasing government spending and the federal debt is as well.
At least that's what one gets from a New York Times piece Saturday applauding a Senate compromise on President Barack Obama's stimulus package.
Here are the paragraphs where patriotism was prominently mentioned (emphasis added):
By Kerry Picket | January 16, 2009 | 11:17 AM EST
When the Senate Judiciary Committee questioned Eric Holder, the media ignored his personal ideological activism. NewBusters Tim Graham recently wrote about how differently the media treated John Ashcroft’s confirmation as opposed to Holder's.
Silence and the media are going hand in hand with the Holder confirmation. The mainstream media is not going after Holder in regards to his involvement with the Marc Rich and FALN pardons, for example.
The mainstream media also claimed that Ashcroft would put ideology over his duties at the Department of Justice. Here are some clips from columnists at a PBS Online Newshour segment during Ashcroft’s 2001 confirmation hearing(emphasis mine throughout:)
By Jeff Poor | April 16, 2008 | 4:58 PM EDT
If you didn't know any better, you might think ABC correspondent Lisa Stark has a personal vendetta against airline mergers.
For the second consecutive night, Stark gave viewers every reason to oppose a merger between Delta Air Lines (NYSE:DAL) and Northwest Airlines (NYSE:NWA) on the April 15 "World News with Charles Gibson." This time it came in the form of opposition on Capitol Hill.
"But there was swift opposition," ABC correspondent Lisa Stark said. "A powerful lawmaker from Minnesota, where Northwest is based, called it one of the worst developments in aviation history."
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