Campaigns & Elections

John Edwards accepts Father of the Year Award, June 27, 2007.

If you believe that there's a 50-50 chance that your take-home pay will be cut by almost one-fifth beginning in as little as five months from now, would that belief affect your current spending habits? Of course it would. But that idea apparently never occurred to the Associated Press's Mark Jewell. In the course of a 950-word article Monday about how the rich are getting more stingy, he focused…

On Thursday’s CBS Early Show, co-host Maggie Rodriguez talked to Republican strategist Ed Rollins about the recent exchange of ads between the McCain and Obama campaigns and started the discussion by declaring: "Let's begin with the one that started this negative tide, John McCain's ad last week comparing Barack Obama to celebrities Paris Hilton and Britney Spears." Rodriguez went on to admit the…

Chicken and egg question: which came first, Obama supporters or pro-Obama media coverage?Such seems important given a new Rasmussen Reports study that found people who watch CNN, MSNBC, and the broadcast network evening news programs largely support Obama for president, while those watching Fox News are more likely to say they're voting for McCain.Though certainly not surprising, is this a…

Apparently having a show on two different networks owned by NBC does not guarantee familiarity with voters.  Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC’s “Hardball” and NBC’s “The Chris Matthews Show” has hinted at a run for Arlen Specter’s Senate seat in 2010 as reported by Mark Finkelstein here.A Quinnipiac University poll of Pennsylvanians found that 55 percent of voters “say they don’t know enough to have…

Amanda Carpenter has an interesting little blurb over at Townhall.com where she reports on Townhall's catching the Washington Post misidentifying three donors as McCain contributors when, in reality, these donors did not donate to the McCain campaign at all. It seems some due diligence was dropped at the Washington Post, for sure. Good thing the new media was there to correct the story! In his…

Be with you in a sec. Gotta finish this bag of Cheetos.  Man, what a mess down here in Mom's basement. Let's see, where were we? Barnicle.  Right. Bloggers. Doesn't think much of us. On this evening's Hardball, decrying the decline of bi-partisanship, Barnicle put much of the blame on the blogosphere.Subbing for Chris Matthews, Barnicle had as his guest historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. The jumping…

Hat tip bigtimer.Joe Scarborough has estimated that 95% of the elite media will pull the lever for Barack Obama.  Even so, evidence continues to mount that the MSM is beginning to view the Dem candidate with a more discerning eye.  The latest example comes from an unexpected corner, that occupied by NBC correspondent Martin Savidge.  As NewsBusters has reported, on everything from climate change…

Aside from being tagged a racist, it now appears that any press member who dares ask presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Barack Obama a tough question will be accused of acting as a proxy for John McCain.Such was the case Tuesday when the junior senator from Illinois was being interviewed on Las Vegas's CBS affiliate.The video embedded right along with the following transcript show a very…

Well, the Associated Press is certainly living up to its new rules of being opinion editorialists instead of reporters if the following headline is any indication: "Obama links energy troubles to unpopular Cheney." This was unleashed on the world by the AP on August 5. So, I ask you, does "unpopular Cheney" sound more like opinion than it does simple news reporting? Certainly we can face facts…

Forget Hardball. Dodgeball's more amusing . . . As we'll detail below, David Shuster literally laughed in the face of a senior Republican today, and earlier on MSNBC Andrea Mitchell blithely dismissed the McCain energy plan as unrealistic. But there was one point of light, you might say, during the network's afternoon coverage.  When Shuster briefly held a Dem congresswoman's feet to the fire on…

Sports enthusiasts are well aware of the phrase "working the refs." This is when head coaches and athletes regularly complain about calls being made on the field or court in the hopes they'll get better ones later in the game.With this in mind, it appears the McCain campaign is successfully working this strategy, as their complaints concerning biased and excessive media coverage of the…

UPDATE, Aug. 6 -- The media fact-checker overview begins here, and continues below the fold:"..... all the oil that they’re talking about getting off drilling" Obama refers to is NOT just the 200,000 additional barrels obtainable from the "Pacific, Atlantic and eastern Gulf regions." Republican proposals also include Alaska, shale oil, and tar sands.Just including Alaska coastal at very…