Bias by Omission

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…

Establishment press reporting has all too often been about perpetuating a narrative, even long after it has been proven false, than conveying facts and truth. Anyone arguing that 2014 has been one of the worst years ever for this growing trend won't get an argument here. An Associated Press poll about the top stories of the year got responses from 85 editors at subscribing AP outlets. Although…

In discussing a statewide ban on hydraulic fracturing announced Wednesday, the New York Daily News carried comments made by Howard Zucker, the state's Health Commissioner, about fracking's impact on public health. Zucker asked two rhetorical questions: "Would I live in a community with (fracking) based on the facts I have now?" and “Would I let my child play in a school field nearby or my family…

The establishment press is virtually giddy over New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's cowardly, self-serving decision to ban fracking in New York. It's cowardly because Cuomo is publicly pretending that he's only deferring to his environmental and health commissioners, when everyone with an ounce of sense knows that he's getting the recommendations he wanted. It's self-serving because it enhances his…

The MRC's “Best Notable Quotables of 2014” looks back at the worst media bias of the year. Each day, NewsBusters will present the "winners" of a different award. Today's category: "The Move Along, Nothing to See Here Award, for Denying Obama's Scandals."

Appearing on Fox News's Hannity Thursday night, NewsBusters publisher and Media Research Center president Brent Bozell condemned the network news for its lack of coverage of the brutal oppression of Fidel Castro's communist regime in the wake of President Obama reopening diplomatic relations with Cuba: "[Castro] has been a mythological figure to the left-wing press since the 1950s. They – for 40…

During the five minutes of coverage that Thursday's NBC Today provided on President Obama reopening diplomatic relations with Cuba, only twenty-three seconds was devoted to critics of the controversial move. In addition, the only opponent featured was Republican Senator Marco Rubio, despite Democratic Senator Robert Menendez equally condemning the presidential action.

Those who rail at Fox News for allegedly being a haven of unbridled, uninterrupted conservatism usually and conveniently fail to remember that Shepard Smith is there. Smith's take yesterday on the potential pitfalls of a thaw in U.S.-Cuba relations, particularly on the commercial front, was nothing short of astonishing. His primary fear, expressed in an interview with Gerri Willis of the Fox…

Following the trend set when news broke early Wednesday, the major broadcast networks continued their praising of the move by President Obama to seek normalized relations with Cuba on their Wednesday night newscasts.  Between the “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC, they made only a few, brief mentions over the course of their 30-minute programs that Cuba was both a communist country and brutal in…

Earlier tonight, Curtis Houck at NewsBusters observed that the Tuesday evening network news shows failed to report on an opinion issued today by a federal judge in Western Pennsylvania in connection with President Obama's illegal immigration-related executive actions last month. Several blogs and center-right outlets noted Judge Arthur Schwab's 38-page "Memorandum Opinion" this afternoon. Not…

A federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled on Tuesday that portions of President Barack Obama’s presidential action on immigration were unconstitutional as “Congress's lawmaking power is not subject to presidential supervision or control” and that “congressional inaction does not endow legislative power with the executive.” However, if you tuned into any of the Tuesday evening newscasts on the major…

In a December 9 article at Politico Magazine, Erica Peterson went after Louisville's "urban heat island" problem, where "a city’s center experiences significantly hotter temperatures than its less-developed surroundings." In doing so, Peterson rolled out some very questionable statistics. But it's her contention that "As pollution and stagnant air bake in the sun" in the city's heat island, "air…

One of the more amusing aspects of observing today's left-biased establishment media environment is seeing agenda-driven journalists directly or indirectly convey a clearly inflated sense of their outlets' self-importance. A recent example of this came Friday from Jacob Silverman at Politico Magazine. In his writeup on conservative firebrand Charles Johnson, Silverman employed the comparative…

It's a good thing that establishment press publications like the New York Times have those layers of editors and fact-checkers. They're able to prevent embarrassing things like misstatements of commonly known facts, misidentifications of key parties involved in recent events, and misspellings those sloppy bloggers and new media types routinely publish. Oh, wait a minute. All three types of…