Bias by Omission

The truth about this year's Thanksgiving and Black Friday store and online sales is out there. It's just that Christopher Rugaber at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, wasn't interested in clearly revealing all of it. Instead, the AP economics writer told readers about the dollar amount of this year's and last year's Thursday and Friday store sales, but failed to quantify the…

On Wednesday, the Associated Press's Josh Boak added to the wire service's collection of weak "Getaway Day" business journalism by declaring that new-home sales "recovered in October." No they didn't. The seasonally adjusted annual rate of 495,000 units reported by the Census Bureau was the fourth-lowest monthly level seen this year, even well below the 521,000 and 545,000 reported in the…

Ever since the White House changed hands almost seven years ago, press reports on the U.S. economy have annoyingly overaccentuated whatever positives reporters might find (or think they have found), while ignoring glaring negatives and omitting key items. One example of such biased reporting came from the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger on Wednesday. In covering the Census Bureau's October…

Economic news on Wednesday's pre-Thanksgiving "Getaway Day" was largely dismal. The government's report on October's personal income and outlays headed up the disappointing news. While incomes increased nicely — at a rate which needs to be repeated about two dozen more times before it can be seen as genuinely impressive — spending only rose by 0.1 percent, while prior months were revised…

It took two weeks after the mass slaughter by radical Islamists in Paris, but the New York Times finally finds itself comfortable with raising the false spectre of American "Islamophobia," with an enormous assist from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the so-called civil-rights organization many consider a Muslim pressure group, and whose ties to Hamas have been documented in…

Promoting his latest book Wednesday night on Newsmax TV, longtime sports writer and Washington Post columnist John Feinstein surprisingly went off the liberal reservation and told host Steve Malzberg that ESPN Radio 980 personality and Pardon the Interruption co-host Tony Kornheiser “should probably have gotten” suspended for comparing conservative Republicans to ISIS back.

There was an interesting lead editorial in Wednesday's New York Times, forcefully in favor of demands from a black protest group at Princeton University to erase President Woodrow Wilson's name from the university's public policy institute because of his vile racial views and support for Jim Crow. Yet one could ask once again, where was this editorial concern five years ago, when it was leading…

Republicans have the upper hand in Congress and in a clear majority of state governments. To Alterman, that state of affairs is a “mystery,” since GOPers typically hold “extreme” and “silly” views “that are not only beyond the boundaries of the beliefs of the vast majority of Americans, but also contrary to the laws of physics, economics, and, of course, common sense.” In the December 7 issue of…

Taking its cues from Monday’s New York Times, Wednesday’s CBS This Morning offered a similarly fawning profile of some young girls in California who are “scouting for change” as they try to force the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) to admit them as members as they preferred the BSA over the Girl Scouts. 

There was yet another sighting of the U-word ("unexpectedly") in connection with disappointing economic news today. Bloomberg News, which most frequently employs the word, told readers that "Consumer confidence unexpectedly declined in November to the lowest level in more than a year as Americans grew less enthusiastic about the labor-market outlook." Expectations were that confidence would…

It's suddenly acceptable in the New York Times to call liberal hero Woodrow Wilson a racist, now that a black campus pressure group is making demands that Princeton University strike the name of Wilson, former president of the university, from the name of its public policy school. Yet for years, prominent conservatives have reminded liberals of the blatant racism and discrimination practiced by…

Amidst all the news about gas prices and weather forecasts for this Thanksgiving week, Monday’s morning and evening newscasts on ABC and NBC found no time to mention that Washington Post reporter and U.S. citizen Jason Rezaian had been sentenced by Iran’s Revolutionary Court to an unspecified prison term after being detained in July 2014.

New York Daily News covers on November 18 ("NRA'S SICK JIHAD" — noted at the time by NB's Kristine Marsh) and today ("NOWHERE TO HIDE, JIHADI WAYNE") have accused the NRA of placing the right to purchase guns ahead of public safety from terrorist attacks. The paper's bogus claim is based on the NRA's opposition to legislation prohibiting anyone on the government's "terror watch list" from…