Bias by Omission

ABC's online "The Note" describes itself as "Washington's Original and Most Influential Tipsheet." ABC News's Senior Political Reporter Richard Klein is its current content creator. We'll see how influential "The Note" really is if what Klein writes about the machinations behind the attempt to make us forget that the Obama stimulus plan was supposedly going to be making some kind of difference…

(Photo is of the martyred "Neda")In a passionate Wall Street Journal op-ed this morning ("Silence Has Consequences for Iran"), former Spanish Prime Minister José Aznar who, in case anyone cares, serves on the board of WSJ parent News Corp., says that "It would be a shame .... if our passivity gave carte blanche to a tyrannical regime to finish off the dissidents and persist with its revolutionary…

Clearly, the most important takeaway from ABC's low-rated White House forum on health care was President Barack Obama's admission that he would go outside the constraints of a nationalized system to get the "very best care" if necessary for his own family.Hot Air's Ed Morrissey noted that Obama's response should properly be seen as "a Michael Dukakis moment that exposed him as a hypocrite."A…

CNN’s Ali Velshi, during a segment on Thursday’s Newsroom program, ignored all the past sex scandals involving Democrats in recent years as he focused on “another sex scandal involving a leading Republican.” When his guest, Tony Blankley, tried to counter with how these scandals are being used to try to get the GOP to abandon social issues, Velshi tried hard to brush this aside.The segment with…

Can food taste too good? Yes, if you're New York Times health columnist Tara Parker-Pope. Her Tuesday "Well" column for the Times is currently the #1 most emailed article on nytimes.com, and is an interview with former Food and Drug Administration head (and over-zealous banner of orange juice and silicon-gel breast implants) David Kessler on his new book, with the typically scolding title, "The…

If the recession was the only reason why the welfare rolls are what they are in the various states, you would expect the percentage of the population utilizing the entitlement program, now known as TANF (Temporary Assistance for Need Families), in the various states to have some sort of relationship to their respective unemployment rates.That is self-evidently not the case. The failure by Sara…

Should there be a background check for national reporters?  One wonders.  On June 21, CNN’s Anderson Cooper aired a special report for CBS’ “60 Minutes.”  In this report, Cooper repeated the tired, discredited, blatantly incorrect idea that 90% of Mexican drug cartels’ arms supply comes from the United States.  In addition, Cooper showed some interesting B-roll footage of seized weapon, some of…

Twenty dollars here, twenty dollars there. After coming from thousands of people, it starts adding up.Anyone who listens to Ed Schultz's radio show or has seen him on MSNBC has almost surely heard Schultz refer to "town hall meetings" he moderates across the country.Schultz began organizing the gatherings during the '08 campaign and revived the practice earlier this year, holding more than a half…

It struck me, in reading this AP dispatch from Tehran by Nasser Karimi and William J. Kole, that the political and media establishment has, in the two decades since the death of the very visible Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeni, allowed Ali Hoseyni Khamenei, his successor as the Supreme Leader of Iran, to fade comfortably into the background, while still pulling all the meaningful levers of power in…

Surprise, surprise.  Despite the overwhelming negative reaction to the President’s statements regarding the Iranian election demonstrations, Washington Post writer Glenn Kessler could not find more than one foreign policy expert that was vaguely critical.  In fact, the sole expert they did find to criticize the President added a caveat – a caveat of praise.In the section titled ‘Approach…

Imagine, if you can, that George W. Bush made a clearly and deliberately false statement (by the way, what the left claims are his five major lies weren't, and still aren't).Now further imagine if the Bush administration's response to criticism of the statement, if not true, had been, "Oh, the president's rhetoric shouldn't be taken literally." The press uproar over such a dismissive response…

By now, you may have actually believed the typical NY Times line that they have to disclose everything, secret prisons, NSA tactics, interrogation tactics, because the public has the right to know everything and information has to be free, despite the risks it puts on our military or citizens. What you probably didn't know is that David Rohde, a NY Times reporter, had been held by kidnappers in…

Maybe reporters Brian Faler or Nicholas Johnston at Bloomberg asked Barack Obama some really challenging questions when they had a chance to interview the President at the White House. Maybe they even did some basic fact-checking. If so, there's precious little evidence of either in their June 16 report.They allowed the president to blame most of the current year's deficit on George W. Bush. They…

Riding on a waning crest of bringing change to the United States and cleaning up the environment, Barack Obama is going head to head against Barbara Boxer on a big issue. There are 44 coal ash dumps that have been designated as a "high hazard" to the public. They contain arsenic and heavy metals from coal plants. Barbara Boxer has seen the list and wants to make it public, whereas Barack Obama…