Bias by Omission

On February 12, in a report on inventories, the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger referred to an economist who believed, in Crutsinger's words, "that the economy expanded at a 2 percent annual rate in the final three months of the year (2014)." That result would be a fairly significant downward revision to the 2.6 percent rate the government estimated in late January. The next day,…

Earlier today, Thaddeus Murphy was charged in U.S. District Court in Colorado in connection with an attempted January bombing in Colorado Springs. The targeted building houses that city's chapter of the NAACP, a barber shop — and, apparently at one time, a tax accountant's office. Quite a few people leaped to the conclusion that the bomb had to be meant for the NAACP, even though, as syndicated…

Julianna Goldman spotlighted the latest ObamaCare glitch on Friday's CBS Evening News. The same evening, ABC's World News Tonight aired a ten-second news brief on the "outrage over another glitch to the ObamaCare website – nearly 800,000 people received inaccurate forms from the site." However, Friday's NBC Nightly News ignored this story completely. Instead, the evening newscast hyped Rudy…

Former New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver was indicted on Thursday on charges of "honest services mail fraud, honest services wire fraud and extortion" involving almost $4 million in alleged bribes and kickbacks. It took Larry Neumeister and Jennifer Peltz at the Associated Press nine paragraphs to tag Silver as a Democrat. It also seems likely, based on this unbylined shorter WGY/AP…

Politico's Mark Caputo is reporting tonight that Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz "offered to change her position on medical marijuana if a major Florida donor recanted his withering criticism of her." Now that there's a serious charge that the congresswoman pays more attention to those who shout the loudest instead of sticking to whatever core principles she…

The “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC each devoted full segments on their Wednesday evening newscasts to a speech given by possible 2016 Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush in Chicago and how the former Florida Governor would be the latest member of the Bush family dynasty to run for president. In focusing on the dynasty angle, however, ABC and NBC failed to even note that Hillary Clinton’s…

So what could be creepier than inappropriately placing your hands on the wife of a new cabinet official? How about inappropriately placing your hand on the leg of a gruff police chief during a solemn ceremony. Joe Biden did both but the first act is all over the news and the classic photo of the latter was buried by the mainstream media. Why? The reason seems to be timing. It is okay now to have…

State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf’s statement that “we cannot win this war” against ISIS by “killing them” and suggestion that “we need...to go after the root causes” like “lack of opportunity for jobs” was even too ridiculous for a liberal like Chris Matthews to swallow. Yet this latest embarrassing moment for Barack Obama’s administration has yet to be reported on any of the Big Three (…

During the swearing-in ceremony of new Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter on Tuesday, Vice President Joe Biden grasped the shoulders of and whispered something to Carter’s wife, Stephanie, in what made for the latest awkward Biden gaffe and predictably spread on social media throughout the remainder of the day. The Tuesday evening newscasts, however, ignored the embarrassment.

In a rundown of the deteriorating situation in Libya in its February 23 issue, New Yorker Magazine's Jon Lee Anderson quoted "a senior (Obama) Administration official" (the capital "A" is Anderson's) who, incredibly, claimed that the country's descent into virtual chaos resulted from "the politicization" of the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack which killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and…

Don Lemon turned to Inna Shevchenko on Monday's CNN Tonight for her account of surviving the recent terrorist attack in Copenhagen, Denmark. However, the CNN anchor failed to point out that Shevchenko is a prominent member of the radical feminist group Femen, which has a history of targeting social conservatives in general, and especially the Catholic Church, for their opposition to same-sex "…

While reporting on the aftermath of the weekend terrorist attacks in Copenhagen, ABC and CBS neglected to mention in their Monday evening reports that the man believed to have carried out the attack that killed two had pledged his allegiance to ISIS and its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, just prior to the first attack at a free speech event. Even though ABC’s Terry Moran referred to the attack as…

It took well over 24 hours, but the New York Times finally corrected (HT Instapundit) op-ed columnist Gail Collins's ignorant Saturday contention about how Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker caused teacher layoff in 2010: "As well as the fact that those layoffs happened because Walker cut state aid to education." Collins was so sure of herself that she emphasized how Walker's 2010 state aid-caused…

Libya's descent into chaos troubles the New York Times editorial board. Naturally, the Old Gray Lady's Sunday editorial, even as it referenced the 2011 "civil war," didn't even try to make any association between the current mess and the administration which initiated it. The editorial's recitation of the current situation, without any mention of President Obama, NATO, or the United States…