Bias by Omission

On Friday, in its January Employment Situation Summary, the government's Bureau of Labor Statistics served up a stack of lemons disguised as lemonade. President Barack Obama declared in a tweet that "We've recovered from the worst economic crisis since the 1930s," and the press dutifully fell in line. The BLS reported that the economy added seasonally adjusted 151,000 payroll jobs and that the…

Liberals seeking to ethnically vitiate Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio on Univision's Al Punto were shut down and embarrassed.

Folks who get their news from a wide variety of sources likely know by now that there is enough concern about the electability of Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders that a prominent Democratic Party donor has "emailed dozens of fans of Vice President Joe Biden on Friday, urging them to remain prepared to donate if Biden jumps into the (presidential) race." But two outlets which have become de…

Washingtonian magazine hyped how "the Catholic Church is selling Northeast DC to developers" in a story in its February 2016 issue. Jeffrey Anderson played up how "Church organizations have been profiting by developing or selling their properties" in the area near the Catholic University of America over the past several years. However, Anderson failed to give any background regarding the Church…

Five items found at the Politico filed late Monday or early Tuesday reported that supporters of Bernie Sanders at the Iowa caucuses, while watching a live feed of Hillary Clinton's speech late Monday evening, began chanting "She's a liar!" The chants grew until they "took over the room," and didn't stop until Sanders campaign officials cut off the live feed being shown. This is barely news in…

Then why the hell weren't those "top journalists" shouting it from the top of the evening news and in banner headlines? . . . On today's Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough said "as we were leaving Iowa, I heard from a lot of top journalists who whispered "you know Bernie won." I heard that time and time again. 'You know Bernie won.'" With Scarborough asking "where is this, Bolivia in the 1930s?" and…

Just as he did on January 24's Meet the Press, MSNBC Presidential Candidates Debate co-moderator Chuck Todd chose to ask Hillary Clinton about her e-mail scandal not in terms of substance or reporting concerning new details about this but instead through a lazy, political lense as if he’s speaking on behalf of Democratic voters. In the first question, Todd provided anecdotal evidence that “many…

MSNBC host and Thursday’s Presidential Candidates Debate co-moderator Rachel Maddow wondered aloud to Hillary Clinton whether some of the positions she’s held at various points warrant concern for the Democratic Party that she’s “too far to the right...to be the party's standard bearer” in the 2016 general election.

On Wednesday, Christopher Rugaber at the Associated Press was tasked with covering ADP's morning report on January private-sector payrolls. At 8:15 a.m., the payroll and benefits giant estimated that the economy added 205,000 seasonally adjusted private-sector jobs last month. Rugaber also attended the 8:30 a.m. conference call which followed the report's release. It's clear that he was on it…

One of the economy's more important bellwethers has been on a steep year-long decline which shows no signs of abating this year. It's barely news, and much of the sparse reporting seen has been incomplete and sloppy. Truckinginfo.com reported today that "January was a tough month for truck manufacturers as Class 8 truck orders were down 35% compared to the previous month, according to a…

A great deal was made of Facebook's announcement last week that it would ban private gun sales on both its flagship website and Instagram. Readers who only followed establishment press accounts can be forgiven if they came away from most reports thinking that the firm has some kind of algorithm or recognition system for enforcing the ban. That's not so.

ABC’s World News Tonight and their fellow newscasts on CBS and NBC went all out on Monday just before the Iowa caucuses, but it was ABC that found it important for viewers to know that Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton began her day by giving volunteers donuts and stopping for coffee at a local coffee shop. In Democratic correspondent and Saturday anchor Cecilia Vega’s report, she began by…

A Sunday morning report by Associated Press political writer John O'Connor acts as if the the sordid history of fiscal irresponsibility in the State of Illinois is a new development brought on by a stubborn Republican governor in just the past seven months. What hogwash. The state has had a large backlog of delinquent unpaid bills for a decade, if not longer. Five years ago, a Democratic…

In trying to explain the current situation in Venezuela, the Washington Post's Matt O'Brien, in a post at the paper's Wonkblog, also inadvertently identified two reasons why authoritarian socialist tyrants like Huge Chavez and Nicolas Maduro are able to achieve and retain power. The formula is simple: When you first gain power, garner international and media goodwill by giving stuff away, like…