Bias by Omission

On Tuesday night, ABC’s World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News ignored a new development in the growing Hillary Clinton e-mail scandal with news just prior to the newscasts that two of Clinton’s e-mails were found to have been “top secret” by the intelligence community’s inspector general. Meanwhile, the CBS Evening News was only able to scour together a 27-second news brief on the story while…

Two wire service dispatches covering the government's June Wholesale Sales and Inventories release either glossed over or completely ignored what others are saying about the report's impact on near-term economic growth. The final sentence of an unbylined Reuters report vaguely referred to future impact by indicating that current inventory balances, which are bloated by historical standards, "…

The Associated Press has been in Ferguson covering the anniversary of Michael Brown's death and the George Soros-funded out-of-towners leading the "festivities." I'll leave it to others to dissect the wire service's on-the-street reporting during the past several days. What also concerns me is how AP's reports continue to bitterly cling to half-truths and distortions about how Brown died and the…

Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act on August 14, 1935. In anticipation of the New Deal-era program's 80th anniversary, the Associated Press's Stephen Ohlemacher presented as facts several unfortunately widely believed distortions. His worst offense against common sense was an item in his list of "modest changes" which could "save" the actuarially…

On Wednesday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency committed an act which would have likely become instant national news if a private entity had done the same thing. On Friday, John Merline at Investors' Business Daily succinctly noted that the EPA "dumped a million gallons of mine waste into Animas River in Colorado, turning it into what looked like Tang, forcing the sheriff's office to…

The Associated Press has demonstrated a double standard in covering developments in various states in the wake of the gruesome Planned Parenthood videos posted by the Center for Medical Progress. Bad news for Planned Parenthood gets only local coverage. Exculpatory news, even if artificially concocted, gets national exposure. In Florida, a statewide review of the state’s 16 Planned Parenthood…

Arthur Chu is "the fourth highest-earning Jeopardy! champion in non-tournament gameplay, with a grand total of $298,200." That achievement, and a supposedly high-end education at Swarthmore College (2013-2014 tuition - $44,368), supposedly qualify him to be columnist at Salon.com. Apparently, you have to be a really smart guy like Chu to figure out that any American who says that "All lives…

On Friday, in his desire to help his employer outdo Politifact as the last place to go for accurate fact-checking, the Associated Press's Josh Lederman "fact-checked" Jeb Bush's belief that the U.S. economy can grow annually at an average rate of 4 percent. As seen in my Friday NewsBusters post, when the AP reporter "fact-checked" assertions that really are facts, specifically Bush's claim that…

ABC's World News Tonight was the sole broadcast network evening newscast on Friday to cover the U.S. Navy's announcement that it would soon position armed guards outside its off-base reserve centers. CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News, along with Univision and Telemundo's evening news programs, ignored this change in policy. ABC's David Muir noted that "the decision follows the deadly shooting…

The Associated Press seems determined to become even worse at "fact-checking" politicians' statements than Politifact, the current cellar-dwellar in that regard. At the rate things are going, the wire service, in addition to richly earning its nickname "the Administration's Press" since January 2009, appears to be in line for yet another: "Associated Politifact." In his "fact check" following…

On Thursday’s network evening programs, ABC’s World News Tonight was the only newscast to make no mention of the 5:00 p.m. EDT debate between the bottom seven Republican presidential contenders ahead of the 9:00 p.m. EDT event featuring the top ten candidates. In addition, the CBS Evening News skipped Carly Fiorina’s attack on fellow candidate Donald Trump for his phone call with Bill Clinton. 

After all three major broadcast networks covered on Wednesday morning news that the FBI is investigating Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server, ABC and NBC moved on from it by the time their evening newscasts rolled around to instead award nearly two minutes to the Cecil the lion story. Joining ABC’s World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News in the blackout of this development was Spanish-…

Speaking with host J.D. Hayworth on Wednesday’s Newsmax Prime, Media Research Center Research Director Rich Noyes discussed the findings of the latest MRC study that show the “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC have given Donald Trump large scores of coverage thus far in the 2016 campaign while giving significantly less time to any of the other GOP candidates.

Though it's not as blatant as the speech which got noticed at Fox News and many center-right outlets (and, of course, nowhere else) eight years ago, it's clear that Hillary Clinton once again altered her diction and style several days ago to (in her mind, one would surmise) "adapt" them to her Southern audience. This time, Mrs. Clinton was being interviewed by South Carolina Democratic Party…