Bias by Omission

(image found at realitycheck.org)See if you think these two assertions mean the same thing:Small businesses pay up to 18 percent more per worker than large firms for the same health insurance policy..... small businesses pay up to 18 percent more per worker to provide health insurance for their employees.Of course they don't mean the same thing. But to the Associated Press's Tom Raum, they…

Here's a particularly noteworthy "Name That Party" follow-up.In a February post ("AP’s ‘Name That Party’ Twist: Disgraced PA Judges’ Dem Party ID Disappears After Initial Inclusion"; at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), I noted that the Associated Press had originally identified the party of two Democratic judges involved in a shocking scheme that pushed thousands of juvenile offenders into detention…

The zoo I'm referring to is the Franklin Park Zoo (FPZ), not the Massachusetts state legislature, although the slang version of the word's meaning likely applies there as well.As reported in a July 10 Boston Globe story, in reaction to Patrick's line-item veto of $4 million of the FPZ's $6.5 million annual subsidy, Zoo New England, which runs the FPZ's two zoo sites, ".... in a written statement…

Four years ago, on June 23, 2005, a 6-3 Supreme Court majority ruled in Kelo v. New London that the New London, Connecticut government could condemn houses in that city's Fort Trumbull area in the name of redevelopment. A bit over a year later, the city settled with the area's final two holdouts, the Cristofaro family and Susette Kelo.Since then the city has without success tried to engage a…

Lawrence O’Donnell failed spectacularly on today’s "Morning Joe" this morning. The Democratic pundit wasn’t alone in that effort, as co-host Mika Brzezinski, and journalists Martin Savidge and Mike Barnicle all failed to correct his gaffe.Apparently, the MSNBC political analyst is under the impression that Sarah Palin’s selection as Vice President drove down female support for the John McCain…

A recent CBS report by Scott Conroy and director of political coverage Steve Chaggaris is typical of the hyperbole to which the Old Media is prone when "reporting" (by that you can read dramatizing) Sarah Palin's political doings. This report is not as chock full of it as some others that have utilized over-the-top phrases and rhetoric to beat down Palin, but there are a few here that ring…

In an "analysis" on how President Obama is dealing with the race issue, AP writer Charles Babington seems to have based his take on what happened to Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on the assumption that Gates was arrested for being black in his home, not that he was arrested for disorderly conduct and for his outrageous disrespect for a police officer -- something to which other police…

Watching Associated Press reports evolve, or as is all too often the case, devolve, can be a revealing exercise.Example: What happened between 8 p.m. Friday and 8 a.m. Saturday that would have caused the Associated Press and writer Nancy Benac to water down the headline and opening paragraphs of their story about the Obama-Gates-Crowley situation from this ........ to this? (after the jump)

Someone at the Associated Press got a headline mostly right ("Obama rushes to quell racial uproar he helped fire") -- although you still have to wonder if it had been almost anyone else, if something along the lines of "xxxx stops short of full apology" would have been used instead.AP writer Nancy Benac's story does note a couple of clear negatives in Barack Obama's behavior in the Henry Gates…

Noel Sheppard mentioned this Associated Press story by Tom Raum yesterday at NewsBusters (Raum is tagged as the writer at this version of the report).Noel characterized Raum's report as suggesting that "the White House's delay in releasing an update about the budget might be tied to the administration's desire to get controversial bills on healthcare reform and cap and trade passed before…

While the big liberal media usually find it hard to skip any news related to the Kennedy family, ABC, CBS and NBC breathed not a word about Saturday’s 40th anniversary of Chappaquiddick. On the night of July 18, 1969, Senator Edward Kennedy left a party with 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne and later drove off a bridge. Kennedy left the scene with Kopechne still in the submerged vehicle; he did not…

Little has been made about yesterday's "The Fall of Capitalism and the Rise of Islam" conference that was held at the Hilton Hotel Grand Ballroom in Oak Lawn, IL. The conference was held by the group Hizb Ut Tahrir; a group that has been banned in Germany, Russia, Pakistan and several other Middle Eastern countries. Yet most mainstream media organizations in the United States didn't even bother…

Spreading the Word Media Research Center President and NewsBusters.org Publisher Brent Bozell today responded to a poll conducted by the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and Zogby International that finds that 84 percent of Americans, including 46 percent of Americans without health insurance, are "very…

Today Joe Biden was in Alexandria, VA, and said, as reported by CNS News:People look at me and say, "What are you talking about, Joe? You're telling me we've got to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?" The answer is "Yes,"I'm tellin' ya.Matt Drudge thinks this is news (link is to his time-stamped archive, which won't change); it is his top headline. Allah at Hot Air thinks it's news, as…