Double Standards

In an opinion piece for CNBC.com on Wednesday, Street Signs anchor Brian Sullivan argued: "...for the majority of the country, $4 gas isn't going to doom us or our economy....right now it just doesn't add up. After all, it looks like $5 is the new $4 when it comes to gas prices and the economy." Sullivan cited new car sales being on the rise, with those vehicles having better gas mileage,…

The Department of (I don't know what kind of) Justice has decided to drop its case again prolife sidewalk counselor Mary Susan Pine and pay her $120,000 in legal fees. DOJ had no case in the first place. If this were an antiwar protester or someone else favored by the left, this would be "DOJ run amok" news. But you will search in vain for a story about Ms. Pine at the Associated Press, the…

For the umpteenth time, news unfavorable or embarrassing to the left comes from the UK instead of the USA. In this instance, it was an unbylined item in Saturday's Daily Mail. For years, Oregon University Sociology and environmental studies professor Kari Norgaard has been spewing forth bigoted characterizations of anyone who dares not surrender to the gospel of global warming. But her…

On Tuesday's CBS This Morning, Charlie Rose rolled over and deferred to chief Obama flack David Axelrod and his talking points defending the President's Monday rant against the Supreme Court and its deliberation on his health care law, along with its attacks on Mitt Romney. Rose tossed softball questions at Axelrod, such as, "Tell me what he [Obama] is saying when he talks about judicial…

Tuesday's New York Times "Gotham" column by Michael Powell went after conservative guerilla journalism in New York City: "At Advocates' Offices, Confronting an Anti-Liberal Scheme." Powell, a well-known opponent of former New York City Republican Mayor Rudy Giuliani as a Metro reporter, portrayed methods that have an honored place in investigative journalism as "dirty tricks" when done by…

On Tuesday's NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer pressed Sarah Palin on whether the Republican nominee should pick a vice presidential running mate with more experience than she had in 2008. Palin hit back: "I would say it doesn't matter if that person has national level experience or not, they're going to get clobbered by the lamestream media, who does not like the conservative message." [Listen to…

Of late, the liberal media has been extremely interested in letting people know that Rush Limbaugh shouldn't have called abortion activist Sandra Fluke a slut since such language is inappropriate. That's a decidedly different attitude from how the media have regarded vulgar and sexist attacks on Wisconsin Lt. Governor Rebecca Kleefisch—and her children. Kleefisch is a wife, mother and cancer…

New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt fretted about the loss of public attention on the "populist" (not left-wing?) Occupy Wall Street movement on Sunday: "For Occupy Movement, a Challenge to Recapture Momentum." (The Times didn't exactly treat the plight of the Tea Party with such sympathetic concern.)

On Tuesday (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), I noted how the Associated Press's headlined assessments at Anne D'Innocenzio's reports throughout the day on the Conference Board's monthly consumer confidence survey went from "falls" to "dips slightly" to "roughly flat" before ending up at "rosy" -- an evaluation the AP reporter also included in the verbiage of her final dispatch. For the record,…

Earlier this year, a reporter informed me of what is apparently a common belief in the business press, namely that "the Labor Department considers the (seasonally adjusted, or SA) numbers to be much more reflective of what’s actually going on in the economy" than the raw (i.e., not seasonally adjusted, or NSA) economic data. That's interesting, given that you can't even do seasonal adjustments…

In the aftermath of the Gabby Giffords shooting, the liberal media were quick to harangue conservative Republicans for a campaign website that had depicted tiny images of crosshairs on different points of the continental U.S.. They represented targeted districts in the 2010 midterm race, including Rep. Giffords' seat. But now in light of the ongoing coverage of the Trayvon Martin shooting,…

Every Congressman who voted on President Obama's budget on Wednesday voted against it -- every Democrat and every Republican. The headline writer for Andrew Taylor's related story at the Associated Press nonetheless felt it necessary to remind readers that Republicans have a majority in the House of Representatives, and only told readers that Dear Leader's budget was "easily" rejected. The…

I had to make sure that the Conference Board, which issues one of the most closely watched consumer confidence reports each month, didn't issue some kind of update during the day after telling us in the morning that its reading for March came in at 70.2, down from 71.6 in February. Nothing changed. But oh how the Associated Press's headlines about the Board's reported results changed in…

The New York Times coverage of the Pope's trip to the dictatorship of Cuba has a strange, cheap-shot emphasis on how the Cuban people are coerced to attend such rallies, an authoritarian power play, but one the paper rarely if ever bothers to address during Cuban May Day rallies held in celebration of communism. A nytimes.com search suggests the Times has never previously used the words "…