Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio put media bias on the front burner at CNBC’s Republican presidential debate, but conservatives and liberals differed sharply on whether what was in the pot smelled appetizing. Several lefty bloggers turned up their noses at the idea that in last night’s event and in general, the media favor Democrats.
Ted Cruz
Bloggers Blast GOP Presidential Candidates' Media Criticism: ‘Reality Has a Bias Toward Journalists’
By Tom Johnson | October 29, 2015 | 5:38 PM EDT 
CNBC Rates Grade Level of GOP Candidates' Speech Patterns; Childish Moderators Not Taken Into Account
By Tom Blumer | October 29, 2015 | 3:50 PM EDT It would appear that CNBC isn't going to take the criticism of its debate panelists' awful conduct last night lying down.
In what appears to be an all too predictable immature response to the dressing-downs several Republican presidential candidates administered to certain of their moderators as a result of their juvenile behavior and insulting questions — particularly John Harwood and Carl Quintillana — the network has rushed out ratings of the top ten GOP candidates' speech patterns during the first three debates, with an obvious undertone: Ignore these candidates; they're just a bunch of dummies.
By Brad Wilmouth | October 29, 2015 | 3:14 PM EDT
On Thursday's New Day on CNN, after host Chris Cuomo charged that GOP presidential candidates had gone "a little bit too far into pandering" in attacking the media during the CNBC presidential debate, Florida Senator and GOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio shot back by recalling the dominant liberal media heaping praise on Hillary Clinton after her Benghazi testimony, in spite of evidence she changed her story on whether the attack was an organized terrorist attack or the result of a spontaneous protest.
By Clay Waters | October 28, 2015 | 10:01 PM EDT
Wednesday's New York Times featured "Ted Cruz as Beowulf: Matching Candidates With Books They Sound Like," in which the Times measured the candidates’ debate rhetoric by complexity and eagerly forwarded some unchallenged stereotypes of "simplistic" conservatives: "'Trump has the language of the board room, the language of entertainment,' [professor Sharon] Jarvis said. 'He really speaks to the conservative base who would prefer not to hear complex arguments.'"
By Ken Shepherd | October 28, 2015 | 9:07 PM EDT
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) took CNBC debate panelists to task for their liberal bias: “The questions that have been asked so far at this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media....The contrast with the Democratic debate, where every thought and question from the media was, which of you is more handsome and why?...And nobody watching at home believes that any of the moderators has any intention of voting in a Republican primary.”
By Mark Finkelstein | October 26, 2015 | 9:12 PM EDT
Can you imagine if in 2007 some conservative had dared call Barack Obama the "Little Mister" of anything? The cries of racism would be ringing to this day.
But on his MSNBC show this evening, Chris Matthews didn't hesitate to denigrate Marco Rubio as "the little Mister Firecracker of the bombs-away set." For good measure, Matthews claimed that "Cruz hates as well as any Republican in modern history."
By Tim Graham | October 22, 2015 | 7:18 AM EDT
Frank Bruni was a White House reporter for The New York Times under George W. Bush, and found him both "lavishly self-deprecating" and "defiantly proud of his own failings and foibles." But he clearly shared something with Bush in his new Times column "The scary spectre of Ted Cruz."
Bruni accurately noted that "Dubya" rarely adds any opinion on current events or leaders in his post-presidency, and yet he was quoted attacking Cruz at a fundraiser for his brother Jeb. “I just don’t like the guy.” Bruni wrote: "I think a great many Americans — including a majority of Cruz’s colleagues in Congress — know exactly how he feels."
By Tim Graham | October 20, 2015 | 11:34 AM EDT
Imagine a Washington Post blogger writing that in his recent endorsement of Hillary Clinton, HUD Secretary Julian Castro could “hardly be more solicitious of Hillary without offering to mow her lawn.” Would that get past an editor without being flagged as at least racially insensitive? A landscaper joke?
But that’s exactly how Jennifer Rubin started her latest screed against Ted Cruz: “Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), without offering to mow his lawn, could hardly be more solicitous of Donald Trump.” Raising a flag of insensitivity should be twice as easy for references to Donald Trump, regarded in liberal newsrooms as a flagrant exploiter of racist voters.
By Curtis Houck | October 1, 2015 | 8:40 PM EDT
Following President Barack Obama’s angry reaction Thursday night to the deadly community college shooting in Oregon and pleas to “politicize” mass shootings, the CBS Evening News did just that with a full story lamenting the lack of gun control by laying blame at the feet of the GOP-led Senate and the National Rifle Association (NRA) for their support of candidates in favor of gun rights.
By Randy Hall | September 29, 2015 | 8:01 PM EDT
During Monday's edition of CNN Tonight With Don Lemon, the host lost control of a discussion about what Republican presidential candidates Ben Carson, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have said about not accepting a Muslim as the nation's commander in chief.
Referring specifically to Carson's comment on the potential for a Muslim president -- which he said he would not support because of Islam’s ties to rigid Sharia law -- Rula Jebreal, a foreign policy analyst, slammed the GOP candidates, going so far as to assert that if someone took a gun into a mosque and killed the people inside, the Republicans “would have blood on their hands.”
By Tom Johnson | September 28, 2015 | 8:27 PM EDT
In mid-July, The Huffington Post announced it would cover Donald Trump’s presidential campaign as entertainment news. Waldman might like that policy extended to GOPers in general, since he thinks they’re more about sound-and-fury theatrics than ideas or legislative accomplishments.
“Today's Republicans,” wrote Waldman in a Sunday American Prospect column, “truly have created not just a politics of anger, but a politics utterly removed from any substance at all. Policy goals may be the nominal justification for all the anger, but in truth nobody bothers figuring out how they might be achieved. The performance is its own end.”
By Brad Wilmouth | September 25, 2015 | 11:44 PM EDT
Appearing as a guest on Friday's CNN Newsroom, CNN political analyst Carl Bernstein asserted that "zealots are winning the soul of the Republican Party" as he blamed the "zealots of his party" for Republican House Speaker John Boehner's announced resignation from the House of Representatives.
Moments later, as he praised the Pope's speech to Congress, Bernstein took a shot at Texas Senator Ted Cruz as he suggested that "I don't think the Pope's message had much of an effect on Ted Cruz."