Double Standards

Yesterday, Tim Graham at NewsBusters did an excellent job of addressing a key aspect of a report submitted by Associated Press reporter Errin Haines, who is African-American, of the presidential campaign of Herman Cain, who is also African-American. Haines questioned "voters' ability to look past his skin color and perceive him as a serious candidate." Herman Cain attended the We The People…

Weekend coverage emanating from Minnesota via Reuters and the Associated Press is doing its level best to run interference for Democratic Governor Mark Dayton, who has chosen to shut down the government rather than sign a budget which does not include tax increases.

Via TV Newser, we learn that MSNBC has "suspended indefinitely" its senior political analyst Mark Halperin for stating on Morning Joe that President Obama was "kind of a [male appendage]." This is not exactly what the "No Labels" crowd at Morning Joe were expecting. The official MSNBC statement: Mark Halperin’s comments this morning were completely inappropriate and unacceptable. We apologize…

While the vast majority of those in the establishment press doggedly insist on reporting seasonally adjusted numbers in most economic spheres, there is an odd exception: Standard & Poor's Case-Shiller Home Price Indices. Not that it's completely the press's fault. S&P emphasizes the raw numbers over the seasonally adjusted ones, and for a pretty good reason: The raw numbers represent…

ABC and CBS have both recently wielded PolitiFact as a club to bash Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), yet in the 29 months since President Barack Obama took office – despite 49 "false" ratings in Obama's PolitiFact file – the three broadcast networks have cited the fact-checking website only once to challenge the Democratic commander-in-chief. ABC host George Stephanopoulos on Tuesday…

New York Times reporter Jeff Zeleny was with Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann in Waterloo, Iowa, at the official launching of her presidential campaign for Tuesday’s “Bachmann Opens Campaign as Expectations Grow.” But Zeleny concluded his mostly balanced story with a reference to Bachmann’s latest in a “string of gaffes” – her mistaken claim that Western movie star John Wayne had been born in…

Earlier today, a grand jury convicted former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat, on 17 of 20 counts of corruption. 11 of of the guilty verdicts related to attempts to profit from the "sale" of the U.S. Senate seat Barack Obama vacated when he became president. At USA Today's On Deadline blog (as of its 5:33 p.m. update), Michael Winter failed to identify Blagojevich or any other…

Given a chance to revise and extend its 9:58 a.m. report (covered this afternoon at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog) on the June 13 altercation between Wisconsin Supreme Court Judges David Prosser, Jr. and Ann Walsh Bradley, the Associated Press's 5:29 p.m. version persists in telling its national audience only one side of the story. Although the fact is that accounts as to who was the aggressor…

Despite the accumulated reportage and commentary available to the Associated Press this morning, the wire service, at 9:58 a.m Eastern Time (saved here for future reference, fair use, and discussion purposes), only reported on one side of the story relating to an altercation that took place between Wisconsin Supreme Court Justices David Prosser, Jr. and Ann Walsh Bradley. In doing so, it…

By failing to initially cover a story millions of people nevertheless learned of -- the presidential gaffe noted at NewsBusters by Matt Sheffield, among others, on Thursday morning -- the Associated Press created a bit of a problem for itself. In a speech to soldiers at Fort Drum, President Obama "mistakenly identified a fallen member of that division as another soldier in a completely…

I can't say that I'm up on what every state is doing, but it's hard not to notice contrasts between two trios of states singing decidedly different tunes: Wisconsin, Ohio and New Jersey, three states with recently elected conservative Republican governors, have either put their budgets to bed, or are on the verge of doing so, by cutting costs and not raising taxes. Connecticut,…

In an exclusive interview with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie on Friday's NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer played a clip of a woman attacking the Republican as hypocritical for sending his children to private school while cutting funding for public schools. Lauer agreed with her premise: "I thought it was a fair question." Lauer sympathized with the woman and argued: "...what she was asking…

Barack Obama's confusing one living American war hero with a fallen one he honored in 2009, has been completely ignored by the Big Three Networks shows, including the same NBC Nightly News that threw a fit over Sarah Palin's recent recounting of an event over 200 years ago, Paul Revere's ride.

It took well over a year, but New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has gotten his way. Covering the story for the New York Times, Richard Perez-Pena seemed to alternate between shock and "Awww." His biggest journalistic distortion was understating the degree to which Christie needed -- and got -- Democratic Party help to pass legislation which, in Pena's words, "will sharply increase what state…