Bias by Omission

The National Journal's Ron Fournier appeared on Greta Van Susteren's Fox News show on Tuesday and blasted Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for "making facts up" and "lying" in his non-stop campaign against the eeeeevil Koch Brothers. Bless his naive little heart, Fournier even actually said: "Shame on us if we in the media let him get away with this." "If"? What's all of a sudden…

I suspect that many readers who do their best to keep up with the news at a detailed level have a hard time understanding how many of their friends, acquaintances and neighbors — even many who they know put some effort into keeping up with current events — can be so unaware of many objectively important news developments. There are two answers to that question. One is that the establishment…

Let it be noted that at 7:17 p.m. on Tuesday, April 8, 2014, CNN.com finally broke down and posted a story on the alleged criminal behavior of California State Senator Leland Yee. The headline at the story by Matt Smith and Jason Carroll ("Feds: Calif. pol Leland Yee schemed to trade arms for campaign cash") gets to the heart of the matter — unlike the headline ("LAWMAKER YEE PLEADS NOT GUILTY…

On Friday, University of California Feminist Studies Associate Professor Mireille Miller-Young pled not guilty to misdemeanor theft, battery, and vandalism. To bring those who missed the two previous related posts up to speed: A video at the YouTube site of the Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust (warning: profanity) shows Miller-Young taking a sign away from a participant in a campus pro-life…

Monday's network evening news casts ignored a new GOP claim that Tea Party groups were indeed singled out for "systematic scrutiny" by the IRS. House Republicans released a report that said the IRS began special investigations in 2010 by targeting only Tea Party groups. Of the first three groups investigated, two of them eventually dropped their applications for non-profit status. The…

Carrie Johnson's Monday report on NPR's Morning Edition could have been mistaken as an informercial for the left-of-center ACLU and the NAACP's efforts to help "protect minority voting rights," after the Supreme Court's Shelby County v. Holder decision from June 2013. Johnson played up how "a divided Supreme Court gutted part of that law – throwing into chaos a system that had required...states…

The primary objection to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), created as part of the mammoth Dodd-Frank legislation passed in 2010, has been its unaccountability. It "is ensconced within the Federal Reserve," which frees it from congressional and presidential oversight. Even the Fed "is statutorily prohibited from 'intervening' in CFPB affairs." It should surprise no one that…

As I noted yesterday, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, when asked to identify a specific accomplishment during her tenure there, failed to answer the question, instead falling back on the Obama administration's tired "we inherited a terrible economy" meme. Never let it be said that yours truly doesn't try to be helpful. Here's an "accomplishment" I can attribute to Mrs. Clinton,…

On April 1 for its April 2 print edition, the New York Times allowed Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro to hold forth in an op-ed about how wondrously the country has been ruled since 1998, mostly by the late Bolivarian thug Hugo Chavez and during the past year by himself. Maduro's piece made the Times's print edition. The Times posted letters objecting to Maduro's characterizations of his…

Several weeks ago, MRC-TV's Dan Joseph visited the Democratic Party's winter meeting to see if attendees could name a single tangible of Hillary Clinton during her tenure as Secretary of State. They couldn't. It turns out that Hillary Clinton herself can't even do that. Remember how Texas Governor Rick Perry was mercilessly ridiculed in the press for his 2011 debate brain cramp when he couldn…

On Thursday evening’s news casts, the networks ignored a claim by major insurer Blue Cross Blue Shield that as many as 20 percent of their new enrollees did not pay the first month’s premium for ObamaCare. If that was the case for all insurers, the White House’s brag of 7 million enrollees would be cut down to 6 million or lower. National Journal had the story, calling Blue Cross Blue Shield…

Though he didn't quite get to the "Shut up, he said" threshold, Politico's David Nather, in a Tuesday tome, argued that HealthCare.gov allegedly crossing the 7 million enrollment threshold leaves opponents blubbering, and supports the argument "that government can still solve big social problems" and is "a wake-up call for Republicans and conservatives." It's as if Nather believes — and maybe…

While ABC, NBC, and CBS all hyped President Obama slamming Republican opposition to ObamaCare during his Tuesday "victory lap" in the White House Rose Garden, the network coverage that evening and Wednesday morning did not include a single GOP sound bite on the topic. [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump] On Tuesday's ABC World News, White House correspondent Jon Karl…

Two weeks ago, Nicholas Riccardi at the Associated Press basically gave an open mic to immigration amnesty groups who pretend to believe that the Obama administration has been deporting more immigrants who are here illegally per year than previous administrations did. Some of the groups involved are moving to disruptive tactics which look more like attempts at mob rule than those employed in a…