Double Standards

Earlier this evening, Vice President Joe Biden, through a spokesperson, backed away from his Sunday comment at a Chinese university about that nation's "one-child" policy, wherein the state allows couples, with relatively rare exceptions, to have only one child. This of course has led to a horrible abortion death toll. A Laura Ingraham email I received this evening, corroborated by a China's…

In two separate interviews of Republican presidential candidates, CNN's Piers Morgan exhibited an obvious contempt of Tea Party politics as well as a double standard toward moderate and conservative presidential candidates. In Monday's interview with Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman, CNN's Piers Morgan baited the moderate candidate to criticize the Tea Party for its unwavering…

To borrow from a certain president's former preacher, the "chickens are coming home to roost" in Social Security's disability program. It's nearly bankrupt, and set to run out of cash by 2017. In the Associated Press's writeup ("Social Security disability on verge of insolvency") of the situation occasioned by a congressional report repeating the obvious, Stephen Ohlemacher surprisingly and…

The opening sentence of Charles Babington's "objective report" about the possible extension of what was billed late last year as a "temporary payroll tax cut" reads like a Democratic National Committee press release: "News flash: Congressional Republicans want to raise your taxes." It doesn't get any better until the final paragraph. Babington's babble is otherwise a long-winded, chidish…

On August 15, the Boston Herald, the Boston Globe, and the Associated Press all reported that Massachusetts-based Evergreen Solar had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Oddly enough (no, not really), The New York Times, which published a 1,600-word report in January (HT to an NB emailer) on the company's competitive difficulties, did not take note of Evergreen's filing. Each of the three…

Establishment press reporters will insist from now until the cows come home that they play it straight. Their actions all too often belie their claims. One such face-hitting example came yesterday in Associated Press reporter Chris Rugaber's coverage of the government's Regional and State Employment and Unemployment report. If it weren't already given away in this post's title, veteran media…

Yo, Rev Al: thanks to Al Gore, we've got the internets.  We can look things up.  So when, on your MSNBC show this evening, you ripped Republican Paul Ryan for holding a $15-a-head fundraiser, of course we're going to check out how much President Obama pulled in per head at a recent do.  Turns out it was . . . $38,500!  So what's your point? View video after the jump.

NPR's Nina Totenberg spent more than 4 minutes on Wednesday's Morning Edition to supposed ethical conflicts of interest for conservative Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Antonin Scalia. By contrast, Totenberg devoted only 17 seconds to the more current issue of liberal Justice Elena Kagan's service in the Obama administration as a factor in upcoming cases before the…

Posted today on the Chicago Tribune's Clout Street blog is the story "GOP attacks Obama bus, but Bush did same," written by Rick Pearson. It begins:

I can hardly believe that the President of the United States, whose team is apparently deeply concerned about their guy's declining popularity and news stories which kept Republicans in the headlines this weekend, is going on a "Me Too" bus tour of Iowa, Minnesota, and Illinois this week. The only plausible reason for this is to attempt to blunt the generally positive GOP vibe coming out of…

Sunday, Alexa Olesen at the Associated Press wrote an item headlined "One-child policy a surprising boon for China girls." My immediate comeback: "43-60 million Chinese girls aborted because they were of the 'wrong' gender or would have violated the one-child policy were not available for comment." While nowhere near as odious as Nick Kristof's "Mao Tse-tung wasn't all that bad; look what he…

Tina Brown got in hot water this week for an unflattering Newsweek cover photo of Tea Party Republican Michele Bachmann but those who've followed the current Daily Beast and Newsweek editor's career, ever since she brought her version of tabloid journalism over from England to Vanity Fair in 1984, can tell you this is just par for the course. In fact that wasn't the first time the former…

About the only "good" thing you can say about the Associated Press's coverage of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania judge Mark Ciavarella is that they have been consistent. That is, the wire service, led by reporter Michael Rubinkam, up to and including today, has consistently and disgracefully failed to tag the infamous "Kids for Cash" jurist and his judicial colleague in crime Michael Conahan as a…

While Newsweek mocks Michele Bachmann as a crazy "Queen of  Rage" on this week’s cover, and Lois Romano in the cover story suggests she’s too submissive a wife, there’s also an article in the very same issue that champions 77-year-old radical feminist Gloria Steinem. She's apparently the Queen of Cool. Writer Nancy Hass insists that Bachmann and Sarah Palin “wouldn't be riling up the Tea…