Bias by Omission

The Media Research Center's Dan Gainor tipped me to a remarkable development this afternoon. Someone at the Atlantic, probably with the help of commenters there, took notice of the noise being made by Doug Ross, yours truly (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), and probably others, and took some action on a disgracefully written 1,800-word article about the upcoming trial of John Edwards by Hampton…

Peter Overby filed a one-sided report on Thursday's All Things Considered about a liberal coalition's campaign against the conservative organization ALEC. Overby cited the "good government group" Common Cause without mentioning the organization's left-of-center ideology. More importantly, the correspondent failed to mention that he is a former employee of Common Cause. The NPR journalist…

As of 1:30 p.m., what follows was a story only at Big Government, The Blaze, and the Daily Caller. The news is that an Indiana union has expanded the scope of an already-filed lawsuit by claiming that the Hoosier State's recently enacted right to work law violates the Thirteenth Amendment's prohibition against slavery because it forces unions to work beside and negotiate on behalf of workers…

At Bloomberg Business Week, the distortion of what the Social Security system's trustees told the public on Monday began with its headline and opening sentence. The headline: "Social Security Fund to Run Out in '35: Trustees." Any reader would assume that the reference is to the situation with the retirement and disability programs combined, as both are collectively referred to as "Social…

It has become clear what the Obama campaign's strategy for trying to win states like Michigan and Ohio is and will continue to be. In three steps, it's as follows: 1) Pretend that the states' Republican governors, John Kasich in Ohio and Rick Snyder in Michigan, who both succeeded free-spending Democrats who presided over stagnant economies, have had nothing to do with their increased…

Karl at Hot Air and others recording their objections at Twitter caught Politifact being two-faced in deciding who gets the "Truth-O-Meter" text. As Karl notes: "PolitiFact rated the story about the Romneys transporting the family dog on the roof of their car as 'Mostly True.' And PolitiFact rated the story about former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee frying squirrels in a popcorn poppersimply '…

The conservative blogosphere has been making mirth out of an entry from Barack Obama's first autobiography, "Dreams From My Father," in which he briefly mentions eating dog as a child in Indonesia. It also functions as a counter to another shaggy political anecdote, widely propagated throughout the liberal media, about Mitt Romney strapping his pet dog to a crate on the top of his station…

In the 2008 campaign, "[t]he media were awestruck, embarrassingly so," over Barack Obama and failed to vet him thoroughly, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell noted on last night's edition of Hannity. "In the primaries in 2008, we counted 29 different times when the networks either called him a rising star, an emerging star, a rock star, or a superstar. Twenty-nine different times," but they…

The liberal media generally but the Associated Press in particular are acting as mere "stenographers" for Barack Obama, failing to scrutinize the president's campaign rhetoric about the economy, NewsBusters senior editor Tim Graham noted on today's Your World with Neil Cavuto. "As much as they say they hate being stenographers to power, this really is what we're seeing in this reelection year…

UPDATE: The headline at AP's 9:37 a.m. report now reads "US unemployment claims signal slower hiring." That's nice, but it won't what was broadcast immediately after the report's release until news outlets become aware of the revision. The games the Associated Press's Chris Rugaber and the wire service's headline writers are playing with the weekly unemployment claims from the Department of…

Yesterday at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, the headline at reporter Jim Kuhnhenn's story on President Obama's latest excuse to add more bureaucrats to the government payroll ("Obama wants to target oil market manipulation") presupposed the existence of oil market manipulation when none has been proven. In 850 words, he didn't find any space for critics of the move, who…

On today's 3:00 pm edition of CNN Newsroom, anchor Brooke Baldwin teased her next segment: BALDWIN: Coming up next, House Republicans they want to cut billions of dollars in food stamps. We will talk about who exactly in terms of numbers this would impact and why my next guest calls this whole suggestion appalling -- back in 60 seconds. Baldwin interviewed Edward Cooney, executive director…

After reading Derek Kravitz's final report of the day at 4:45 p.m. on the housing market at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, I just had to check the other wires to see if they were sipping from the same housing-market-in-recovery koolaid. The answer is no. At Reuters, Jason Lange's 3:22 p.m. dispatch reported that "Output at U.S. factories slipped in March and builders…

Monday brought more downplaying of violence and vandalism within the Occupy Wall Street movement, from the New York Times. Joseph Goldstein and Colin Moynihan reported for the Metro section: "3 Arrested in Manhattan as March Turns Into a Melee." A group of people who had attended an anarchist book fair in Manhattan later marched to a nearby Starbucks on Saturday night and began swinging at…