Bias by Omission

Question: How do you water down the possible significance of a statement by an Iranian diplomat?Answer: Wait for an AFP journalist to revise a previous raw report.A short unbylined dispatch from the wire service reported that the diplomat "apparently misspoke" when he said that Iran has "the right to a nuclear weapon" not long after the incident occurred. (Dictionary.com tells us that "Used…

The L.A. Times is parsing math.If you were to not read Josh Meyer’s June 17 article very carefully, you might think that 90 percent of the weapons recovered from Mexican cartel raids originated in the United States:The report by the congressional Government Accountability Office, the first federal assessment of the issue, offered blistering conclusions that will probably influence the debate over…

Two reports on CNN’s Situation Room on Wednesday about President Obama’s extension of benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees and the campaign to overturn Proposition 8 in California featured only left-wing sound bites, and none from conservative opponents of homosexual activists.The first report from correspondent Dan Lothian, which aired just after the beginning of the 4 pm Eastern…

The Associated Press posted an "analysis" piece by writer Tom Raum on June 15 to address the GOP strategy against Obamacare and other administration policies but the APs characterization of the GOPs efforts almost seem meant to belittle and de-legitimize that opposition as opposed to describing it. The entire GOP argument against Obama is boiled down to a use of "buzz words" as far as AP's Raum…

First the federal government's auto bailout bullies came for Chrysler's secured, first-lien creditors, and defeated them.Then they came for General Motors' unsecured bondholders. The feds appear to be in the drivers' seat in shafting them disproportionately to force a better deal for the United Auto Workers' healthcare trust.Now, in a matter that at first only seemed to interest the Wall Street…

Mike Jay at the Boston Globe had what appeared to be a pretty compelling lookback piece on Sunday, June 7. It started as follows:The day pain diedWhat really happened during the most famous moment in Boston medicineThe date of the first operation under anesthetic, Oct. 16, 1846, ranks among the most iconic in the history of medicine. It was the moment when Boston, and indeed the United States,…

Conservative blogger and friend of NewsBusters Andrew Breitbart has an excellent column in today's Washington Times entitled "Left cries 'racist' in crowded country."The creator of the Big Hollywood blog noted in his June 15 column the inconvenient truth the mainstream media did not focus on in the aftermath of last week's Holocaust Museum shooting, even as the MSM furthered the meme that  The…

Back in 2005, the Old Media was all atwitter over a supposed "plant reporter" at a Bush press conference. The Old Media made a big deal out of this guy and used it to try and cast the Bush White House as employing some sort of underhanded control of information. Flash forward to today, President Obama held his Healthcare townhall in Green Bay, Wisconsin. It turns out that Obama's first "…

Leave it to the British press to once again do the job of real reporting that U.S. journalists apparently won't do.This time, it's Tom Leonard at the UK Telegraph. From Flint, Michigan, he tells us of a "pioneering scheme" that involves tearing down entire neighborhoods and simply abandoning them -- oops, I'm sorry, I meant to say, "returning them to nature."This is apparently what passes for…

It's pretty hard to dress up a disaster as something less than that, but the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger gave it his best shot in his report yesterdayabout Uncle Sam's the May Monthly Treasury Statement, in effect understating the amount and significance of federal government's rapidly deteriorating financial situation.With the help of dubious handling of last year's stimulus payments in…

Michael Rowe has an article on the Huffington Post, posted today, that makes a few wild-eyed claims about right-wing extremists.For example, Ann Coulter is responsible for yesterday’s tragic shooting at the Holocaust Museum.Bill O’Reilly is responsible for the shooting of well-known abortion doctor George Tiller.Oh, and the coup de grace: Sarah Palin and all of her supporters are raging racists.…

It's pretty hard to dress up a disaster as something less than that, but the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger gave it his best shot in his report yesterday about Uncle Sam's the May Monthly Treasury Statement, in effect understating the amount and significance of federal government's rapidly deteriorating financial situation.With the help of dubious handling of last year's stimulus payments…

After David Letterman made sexist attacks on the Palin family, the New York Times made sure to cover for him. On “The Late Show” Monday, Letterman joked about Palin’s 14-year-old daughter Willow getting “knocked-up” by Alex Rodriguez, and the Times has scrubbed that joke from their transcript of the opening monologue. The transcript, available here contains all the hilarious quips about Palin…

A local cop tasers a 72 great-grandmother and it's all caught on camera. How dare that nasty cop!! Which is precisely the reaction you'd get if you watched the segment on this morning's CBS's "The Early Show." The program begins the video right where the police officer tasers the woman, basically ignoring everything that transpired only moments before. "The Early Show" then shows a brief snippet…