Double Standards

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…

Wednesday evening, the Associated Press's Sam Hananel, with predictable help from Scott Bauer, tried to do a Bing Crosby imitation ("Unions look for silver lining in Wisconsin recalls") in an attempt to "Accentuate the Positive" in reporting on the results of yesterday's attempts to defeat six Republican Badger State Senators in recall elections. Democrats, leftists, and public-sector unions…

Five years ago Post fashion writer Robin Givhan scoffed at the notion of modest swimwear in a July 14, 2006 column "Ultimate Coverup." Fast forward to today and the Post's Alison Lake gave Style section readers a gushy look at how "Muslim women shop for ways to bare little." "Web sites offer modest fashions suitable for summer and pool wear," noted the subheader to Lake's story.

Today CNN's Politics Web site carries the story "Republicans name fiscal conservatives to debt committee," written by Deirdre Walsh and Tom Cohen.  The piece begins: "Republican leaders on Wednesday named fiscal conservatives for their six picks for a new congressional "super" committee charged with crafting a plan to cut the country's deficit." OK, the GOP's selections would be seen by…

NOTE: This post replicates one which originally appeared on August 10 but was inadvertently deleted due to system complications two days later. For some reason, Associated Press reporters Eric Tucker and Thomas Watkins, in a story about the wave of flash mob crime in the U.S. this summer, felt compelled to find an "expert" who would express some sympathy for its participants. Well, they…