Bias by Omission

Call the Ripley's Believe It or Not people. Have smelling salts available. What follows will surely be one of the more unusual things you've seen or heard this year. In the midst of his otherwise odious Silicon Valley race-hustling shakedown effort, Jesse Jackson said something that made sense — so much sense that the rest of the press, which usually hangs on every word of his nonsensical…

Chris Megerian at the Los Angeles Times, in a report first published online on Tuesday, had a difficult time trying to downplay the fact that Democrat and leftist mega-donors outspent their Republican and conservative couterparts by an overwhelming margin during the past election cycle. But Megerian made the best of it, giving readers the impression that David Koch, of the supposedly evil Koch…

Let's say that a Republican or conservative governor or big-city mayor (yes, there actually are quite a few) was in a heated dispute with his state's or city's police union. Let's further say that this official decided that his or her best method for whipping up support was to order the staff to (ahem) "ask" GOP legislators or council members to issue public statements of support while bashing…

Each of the network morning shows devoted some time on Wednesday to looking back at the biggest news stories of year and, while they certainly could not have included every story in the allotted time, they all failed to spend even a few seconds on topics such as Jonathan Gruber, pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, President Obama’s unpopularity, and the Hobby Lobby case to name a few. In…

Earlier this evening, Clay Waters at NewsBusters noted the New York Times Editorial Board's blistering attack on Gotham's finest. The Times editorial insisted that the NYPD has "squandered" its presumptive respect in its treatment of Mayor Bill de Blasio since a bi-racial grand jury's December 3 decision not to indict officers on the scene in July when Eric Garner died on Staten Island. This is…

The Associated Press is obsessed with global warming. It currently has seven items at its national site containing that term. Two of them relate to how the U.S. is allegedly exporting more pollution, and therefore more global warming, to other countries even as it supposedly is cleaning up its act. These are the kinds of stories which the rest of the press would eagerly jump on if a Republican…

At the Associated Press on Christmas Day, reporter Josh Lederman carried out what might as well be his official administration stenographer duties with special aplomb. Three paragraphs will illustrate how Lederman glossed over realities relating to the 13-year war in Afghanistan and went all gooey over Barack and Michelle Obama's vacation:

The old saying — "To err is human, but to really screw things up, you need a computer" — needs an update. In this case, it's "To err is human, but to wreck an entire industry, you need to have the federal government try to force it to computerize." I'm referring to the government's attempt to coerce doctors into using its mandated, "clunky, time-sucking" electronic health records system. Somehow…

What is it with the establishment press and communism? The earth's most murderous political philosophy and its most murderous practitioners still get undeserved and occasionally even complimentary attention, while their crimes against humanity get brushed aside, ignored, or downplayed. A Christmas Day item from Romania at the Associated Press illustrates the point. The first six of its eight…

In St. Louis County, police have arrested 19 year-old Joshua Williams and charged him (HT Gateway Pundit) with committing "1st degree arson, 2nd degree burglary and misdemeanor theft" at the QuikTrip convenience store in Berkeley, Missouri on Christmas Eve. Williams "has confessed to the crimes." The St. Louis Post-Dispatch gets today's prize for most absurd headline, as seen after the jump (…

What follows is an object lesson in why year-end best, worst and other lists shouldn't be published until the year actually ends. A Kwanzaa "parade" was held in Los Angeles yesterday. In reporting on the event, CBS Los Angeles published a work of fiction (saved here for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes) which absolutely belongs on any 2014 list of most embarrassing moments in…

As I noted almost two weeks ago, hundreds of protesters in Manhattan repeatedly shouted "What do we want? Dead Cops! When do we want it? Now!" during that city's version of the so-called "Justice For All" marches which took place in several locations around the nation on December 13. The New York Times failed to report the protesters' rants in its original coverage of the marches. The fact that…

Earlier this morning, I posted on Vermont's abandonment of its attempt to impose and implement a "single-payer" (i.e., government-controlled) healthcare system, and on how muted the press coverage has been. It's difficult to overstate how devastating the Green Mountain State's blowup is to the left's oft-stated long-term goal of imposing single-payer, occasionally referred to a "Medicare for all…

President Barack Obama, soon to be former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, former Congressman Barney Frank, and many other prominent Democrats and leftists have over the past several years declared that their ultimate goal is turn the U.S. healthcare system into a "single-payer," i.e., completely government-controlled, enterprise. That likely explains why the reaction to Vermont's abandonment…