2012 Presidential

Filling in for co-host Matt Lauer on Friday's NBC Today, CNBC's Carl Quintanilla seemed to suggest the media was helping the Obama administration shape public perception of the economy: "...we're in a situation where we're sort of managing expectations, especially for the White House." Quintanilla followed that admission by asking CNBC Mad Money host Jim Cramer about the upcoming jobs report…

"There's only one person who's trying to insert the reproductive rights debate into this campaign," NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell noted in the "Media Mash" segment  of the March 8 edition of Fox News Channel's Hannity. It's Barack Obama who made this a live issue when he moved to push religious institutions to provide contraception, even if it violates their religious conscience to do so…

Sarah Palin on Thursday took Barack Obama to task for not telling his Super PAC to return Bill Maher's million dollar donation. Speaking to Fox News's Sean Hannity, the former Alaska Governor said, "It does not bode well for our President's character to not speak out against that dirty money" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Mark Halperin says Mitt Romney's campaign has the worst relationship with the media of any major candidate he's covered.  But, according to the man from Time, it has nothing to do with the fact that Romney is the front-runner to take on the MSM's Chosen One.  No, Halperin assures us, "it's not a partisan thing."  The fault lies entirely with the Romney campaign itself, which reportedly has kept…

Joe Scarborough doesn't just take his Obama-landslide talk to NBC. He also spewed some of it on the Tavis Smiley show on PBS on Monday night. "This past month has been – and I was saying it this morning on the [MSNBC] show – this has been the worst month for the Republican Party since August of 1974 when Richard Nixon resigned, and I mean that." To which Smiley replied: "Wow, wow, wow, wow."…

Mitt Romney won more than twice as many delegates on Super Tuesday as Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum. The Non-Fox Media's take-away is that Romney suffered a major setback Tuesday night. No matter what happens, Barack Obama's boosters in the NFM portray it as a debilitating blow to Romney. On Nov. 7, The New York Times' headline will be: "Romney ekes out narrow electoral victory, leaving race…

Earlier today (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), I noted the press's ridiculously forgiving coverage of today's reported increase in unemployment claims while concentrating primarily on RTT News's assertion that the unemployment rate should continue to come down as long as weekly claims stay below 400,000. Three years ago, Christopher Rugaber's threshold at the Associated Press, also known to…

When Breitbart.com's Joel Pollak went on CNN and connected then-law student Barack Obama to radical Harvard professor Derrick Bell, CNN guest Jay Thomas of Sirius radio began creepily asking Pollak if he was afraid of violence from black people, on Thursday morning's Starting Point. During the chippy segment, host Soledad O'Brien fiercely defended Bell and insisted that Obama's previous…

NewsBusters fan and PoliticalDerby.com blogger Steve Feinstein picked up on an interesting, albeit subtle, thread of bias in a Chuck Todd "First Read" blog post yesterday wherein the MSNBC Daily Rundown host hailed the 2008 Democratic primary as a "clash of political titans" in Hillary Clinton vs. Barack Obama:

On Thursday's NBC Today, correspondent Peter Alexander excitedly promoted an upcoming Obama campaign ad disguised as a documentary: "Next week the Obama campaign will release this 17-minute documentary about the President's first term in office. And Today was given an exclusive first look."

"Number of U.S. Hate Groups Is Rising, Report Says," New York Times Atlanta-based Kim Severson reported Thursday. But that "report" was not some government finding, but came straight from The Southern Poverty Law Center, a left-wing activist group whose fund-raising is based on finding as many dangerous right-wing groups as possible. The Times has promoted the propagandists at SPLC before,…

Beginning an interview with MSNBC Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough on Thursday's NBC Today, co-host Ann Curry wondered: "If you were head of the Republican Party trying to defeat Barack Obama in November-" Scarborough promptly interrupted her: "I'd quit." That defeatist attitude set the tone for the rest of the Obama-campaign-approved segment. Giving a supposedly "serious" response to Curry'…

The Department of Labor reported today that initial claims for unemployment benefits increased to 362,000 from an upwardly revised (as usual) 354,000 the previous week. Expectations were for a reading of 351,000 (Business Insider's email) or 352,000 (Bloomberg). Over at the Associated Press, also known as the Administration's Press, the headlined reaction in its 9:17 a.m. report was: "…

Having spent the past week mercilessly attacking conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh for his comments concerning Georgetown University law student and women's rights activist Sandra Fluke, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow closed Wednesday's program by discussing at length Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum's vulgar "Google problem." You see, calling a liberal woman a slut is…