Damian Paletta

WSJ's Paletta Blames Tea Party for Broken Congress, Omits Reid's Unwillingness to Pass Budget
By Ken Shepherd | October 1, 2013 | 6:55 PM EDT

Corrected from earlier | "After three years of last-minute deals, delayed decisions, and acrimonious finger pointing, the process for one of Congress's most basic functions—spending money—finally buckled and broke down Monday night," the Wall Street Journal's Damian Paletta sighed in the opening paragraph of his October 1 story, "Breakdown Is New Norm in Spending Fights."

"Since passage of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, the House and Senate have been directed to pass annual budget resolutions setting targets for government spending levels and then work out the differences," but "Congress in recent years has abandoned its traditional budget and appropriations process," Paletta noted. Yet nowhere in his 21-paragraph story did the Journal scribe lay any blame at the feet of Senate Democrats and their leader, Harry Reid (D-Nev.), even though the upper chamber failed to pass a budget in nearly four years, only doing so in March.* 

Study in Bias: Two Takes on Financial Regs -- Journal vs. NY Times as Pointed Out by CNBC’s Kernen
By Jeff Poor | March 15, 2010 | 7:13 PM EDT

It's a topic that would probably make the average individual's eyes glaze over, but will have a profound impact on the economy - for better or worse. The topic - financial regulation reform.

With Senate Banking Chairman Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., setting his proposal out for the public, the take away on the reporting from two of the country's major newspapers - The New York Times and Wall Street Journal can give readers a view where their reporters' loyalties lie.

On CNBC's March 15 "Squawk Box," co-host Joe Kernen raised this point - the Journal with its more pro-Wall Street point of view and the Times with a liberal pro-Democratic Party one.

"You - I like the way you highlighted the Journal's take, ‘Ohh, this thing is ahh, much worse,' but The New York Times - ‘consensus-building,'" Kernen said. "But The New York Times is talking about consensus-building within the Democratic Party, I think, right? I mean, normally that's who they're speaking to, isn't it?"