Campaigns & Elections

Associated Press lead reporter Liz Sidoti, other contributors (AP Director of Surveys Trevor Tompson, AP News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius and AP writer Alan Fram), and the wire service's supposedly vaunted editors apparently don't understand what a polling margin of error is. In a Wednesday story I found in four different places (CBS News, AP-Google, Breitbart, Yahoo! News), Sidoti et al let…

On Thursday’s CBS Early Show, co-host Maggie Rodriguez discussed the congressional races with the editor of the liberal New Republic magazine, Michael Crowley, and asked: "Now, if the Democrats get to 60 seats, as they hope to, what would be significant about that?" Crowley replied: "...in the Senate the other -- the opposition can filibuster. And if you have 60 votes you can basically tell them…

Spreading the WordAs we reported earlier, former Newsweek reporter Michael Hastings drops one rhetorical bomb after another on the media in a new article for GQ magazine.  All of them reinforcing what we already knew, best summarized by Hastings himself: the press's "objectivity is a fallacy." It has been a horrendous year for the media's credibility, and Hastings's statements only make it…

In an interview with Barack Obama aired on Thursday’s CBS Early Show, co-host Harry Smith lobbed softballs at the Democratic candidate, spending half the interview on Obama visiting his ailing grandmother: "Lincoln said, 'all I ever hope to be, I owe to her,' in speaking about his mother. Your grandmother was very much like a mother to you. How important is this trip?" Smith later observed: "Some…

On Tuesday's "Nightline," co-anchor Cynthia McFadden conducted her second interview this week with Hillary Clinton and, once again, offered no policy questions and focused only on pushing the New York senator to bash Governor Sarah Palin. The liberal journalist repeatedly questioned, five times in total, variations on whether or not Palin is qualified or good for women. At one point she even…

If John McCain had gone back on his promise to accept public campaign money, and instead set fundraising records that put him as many as fourteen points ahead in the polls with less than two weeks to go before Election Day, do you think there'd be a lot of media carping and whining about rich Republicans buying the White House?Probably 24 hours a day, seven days a week until the final vote had…

Want to talk media bias?A new study from the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that since the Republican National Convention, there have been three times more negative press reports about John McCain than positive ones.By contrast, during the same period, media coverage of Obama has been more positive than negative.Think this might be impacting voter perceptions?Here are the study's key…

Want to talk media bias?A new survey found that more Americans know who Joe the Plumber is than about Barack Obama's ties to the radical group ACORN.The same study released Wednesday by the highly-respected Pew Resesearch Center found that voters, by a margin of almost eight to one, believe media want Barack Obama to win on Election Day instead of John McCain.Although it is typical the public…

Let's take a break from the tedious MSM spin on the latest polls, and settle back and enjoy the televised spectacle of two people who patently dislike each other going at it on live national TV.Former UN Ambassador/current Obama backer Richard Holbrooke was a guest on today's Morning Joe.  Observing Holbrooke over the years, he's struck me as someone with, shall we say, a deep and abiding…

Amanda Carpenter at Townhall brings our attention to something amazing: NBC and MSNBC are working with ACORN and other left-wing interest groups in a "nonpartisan" effort at "Election Protection." Is that a bad joke, working with ACORN on ballot integrity? An NBC press release on Tuesday announced: With less than 14 days before Election Day, NBC News and Election Protection will be joining forces…

Wendi C. Thomas, a black journalist that has written for such media outlets as the Charlotte Observer, the Indianapolis Star and the Nashville Tennessean, was recently asked by what she called a "white man in Memphis" if blacks would riot if Barack Obama should lose the upcoming general election. The question made her angry, and I can't blame her for that anger. But, after a brief flash of sanity…

As if we didn't know already by the evidence of the left-wing media establishment's work, Pew Research unveiled a new survey that showed that John McCain has been on the receiving end of "heavily unfavorable" coverage. In fact, according to Pew, McCain's media coverage has become more negative over time with unfavorable stories about him outweighing favorable ones "by a factor of more than three-…

How over-the-top was Chris Matthews in his vituperation against Sarah Palin and McCain adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer this evening? So much so that:Matthews twice berated an Obama representative for being insufficiently aggressive in going after Palin; Brian Williams, in the subsequent segment, chided Matthews on his emotionalism.The Hardball host was infuriated by Palin's description, in answer to a…

When a McCain campaign representative told David Shuster today that the source of much of Barack Obama's fund-raising is unknown, the MSNBC host scoffed, claiming only "right-wing" blogs could believe that and challenging the spokesman to cite a credible source.  Instead of fulminating about the conservative blogosphere, David might want to pick up a copy of Newsweek, which last time I looked had…