Campaigns & Elections

Update (July 10, 2:57 p.m. EDT): Lui responds via Twitter (see bottom of post for full update). MSNBC continued this morning to misrepresent the implications of Texas’s voter ID laws, which don’t permit college or university student IDs as valid photo identification for voting in the Lone Star State. During his appearance on MSNBC Live in the 11 a.m. Eastern hour, Ryan Haygood of the NAACP…

CNN's Candy Crowley on Sunday actually pressed a senior Barack Obama adviser on the campaign's "false" claim that Mitt Romney was responsible for outsourcing while at Bain Capital. Unlike ABC, which credulously parroted Obama's attacks, Crowley reminded Robert Gibbs that "this particular ad got four Pinocchios from the Washington Post." The Obama operative dodged, huffing, "Factcheck.org…

The Washington Post's popular Fact Checker political column isn't known for being particularly balanced when it comes to choosing which statements to dissect. So, it was surprising when the column's author Glenn Kessler, who usually chooses to go after statements made by prominent Republicans, fact-checked a tweet made by President Obama. On July 3, @BarackObama tweeted, "FACT: In 2010 and…

Certain events in the 2012 campaign make you ask how would the media respond if a particular story was about Mitt Romney rather than President Obama.  Take this past Friday, when President Obama was introduced at an Ohio rally by a man accused to stealing trade secrets from his former employer.  According to a local CBS affiliate in Cleveland, Ohio, Daniel Potkanowicz has been ordered to pay…

Conservative author Pat Buchanan made a joke on PBS's McLaughlin Group Friday destined to anger a lot of women. When asked when America will elect its first female president, Buchanan said, "Let's hope" it's not before "2040 or 2050" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

Is CNN campaigning for Rep. Joe Walsh's Democratic opponent? In a heated exchange with Walsh on Thursday, anchor Ashleigh Banfield rattled off a list of opponent Tammy Duckworth's accomplishments and admitted "she should get elected" if voters are pleased with her resume. CNN gave much softer treatment to Duckworth on Friday. Host Wolf Blitzer did press her about controversial statements she…

CBS's Jeff Glor confronted David Axelrod on Friday's CBS This Morning over his most recent attack on presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney: "You said that Mitt Romney was the most secretive candidate since Richard Nixon....I think that would strike a lot of people as extreme. Do you stand by those comments?" Glor also pressed Axelrod on the Obama campaign's "outsourcer-in…

In Thursday's campaign report by ABC's Jake Tapper, the Obama campaign received four soundbites as opposed to just one for Romney surrogates. The sharp imbalance was capitalized by Tapper choosing the word "nefarious" to describe the Obama campaign's caricature of Romney. "Others in the Obama campaign discussing wealth Romney has invested overseas in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda painted an…

As Obama prepared to tour northern Ohio cities by bus on Thursday, NPR's Morning Edition was trying to take apart the Republican challenger to liberal Senator Sherrod Brown. First, correspondent David Welna dismissed 34-year-old GOP state treasurer Josh Mandel as someone "who could easily be mistaken for a teenager." Then he added that "independent" (read: liberal media elite) fact-checkers…

In a parting shot at Mitt Romney, NBC's Ron Mott pointed to liberal rag Vanity Fair's hit piece on the candidate's wealth at they very end of Mott's report on the presidential campaign. The very mention of the article was out of place in a report mostly about campaign messaging. After mentioning Romney's new web video "The Best of America," Mott added that "The ad was released on the heels…

In an analysis piece which, based on its title ("In divided era, what does July 4th mean?"), was as predictable as heat in July, Ted Anthony, who is tasked with writing "about American culture" at the Associated Press, attempted to explain, 236 years in, where what he claims is "the only nation in the world that was built solely upon an idea" stands. (Communism as an idea is what originally…

A consistent media narrative as the GOP moves to repeal ObamaCare is that they have nothing to replace it with. Surprisingly standing up to refute this nonsense Tuesday was New York Times columnist David Brooks who amazingly wrote, "Despite what you’ve read, there is a coherent Republican plan":

Herman Cain's new "Cain TV" project, which he announced in a promo video on his Facebook page, will feature not only "critical commentary on issues of the day" but "pearls of wisdom from Herman himself," MSNBC's Alex Wagner snarked in a segment on today's Now with Alex entitled onscreen "This Just Happened." But the "pearl of wisdom" Wagner showed was a clip of Cain's video taken out of…

ABC's World News on Sunday hyped Barack Obama's attack ads against Mitt Romney's past work for Bain Capital. Anchor David Muir even played a clip of one of the President's ads.  Washington editor Rick Klein trumpeted, "Democrats are definitely breaking through by calling into question what Romney wants to be his biggest strength." Muir hyped, "If you live in those battlegrounds, you can't…