Double Standards

This morning, Christopher Rugaber's coverage of the news from Uncle Sam's Bureau of Economic Analysis about the growth in the nation's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) at the Associated Press appropriately characterized it as indicative of a "sharp slowdown" and "extremely bad" (via a quoted economist). Today's report carried an advance estimate of second-quarter growth of an annualized 1.3%. As…

During the current debt ceiling debate, have the media told you what your personal share of the national debt would be after the ceiling is hiked? Yeah. I didn't think so. But when it was a midterm election year in which Democrats thrashed President George W. Bush and the GOP on overspending, it was a different story.

I guess at Reuters, when you see that an economy can't meet normal benchmarks for success, you simply lower them, and pretend that success will come anyway. Over at the Associated Press a few weeks ago, in his write-up in the wake of the government's awful June employment report, Chris Rugaber correctly pegged the kind of economic growth it will take to get millions of currently unemployed…

Wednesday’s New York Times lead story on the debt ceiling standoff by Jennifer Steinhauer and Carl Hulse,  “Facing Obstacles, G.O.P. Delays Vote On Plan For Debt – Conservatives Restive – Boehner’s Grip on His Caucus Is Put to the Test in Standoff,” is the second consecutive Times lead overloaded with “conservative” labels, as if only one side of the debate has an ideological motivation.…

Perhaps CNN stands for the Closeted News Network. No, that doesn't work. There's nothing closeted about CNN's clear advocacy for homosexual causes. A Culture and Media Institute analysis of 239 programs aired on CNN from the period June 15 to July 15 revealed that CNN quoted or interviewed nearly four times the number of gay-agenda supporters as critics.

If there's a reason why Dayton Daily News staff writer Drew Simon wrote his Tuesday morning story ("Seniors fear losing Social Security checks") other than to scare the elderly, I don't know what it is. Nowhere in his report did Simon say who was the first person to invalidly raise the specter of Social Security checks not going out on August 2 (it was President Barack Obama, in case you…

Sunday’s front-page, over-the-fold New York Times headline on the massacre in Norway (over a story by Scott Shane and Steven Erlanger) was blunt: “As Horrors Emerge, Norway Charges Christian Extremist – Manifesto Shows Plan of Attack, Fear of Islam.” But while the Times showed no reluctance to identify Anders Behring Breivik, the lone gunman in the Norway attacks, as a “Christian extremist”…

One can hardly imagine a newspaper running a headline that suggested a fascist society like Nazi Germany had its good points. Yet the New York Times has carved out a side industry in headlines that suggest a bright side to Communist tyranny in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The latest came attached to art critic Holland Cotter’s 1,700-word review of “Ostalgia,” an exhibit of Soviet and…

Yesterday, White House spokesmouth Jay Carney made yet another claim concerning how grrrrrrreat the economy is compared when President Barack Obama took office (bold is mine): The economy is vastly improved from what it was when Barack Obama was sworn into office as president. To no one's surprise, this howler was not considered news at the Associated Press. No article found in a search at…

Iowa Senator Tom Harkin was at his worst Wednesday morning in a press conference. Sure, there was the usual immature Democratic Party name-calling -- calling Republicans "dead-beat debtors" and characterizing Republicans who oppose raising the debt ceiling as a "cult fringe," even though polls seem to be showing that 60% of Americans are in that "fringe." But beyond that, Harkin uttered a…

Usually, it's easy to dismiss the moonbat ravings of the far left. But when liberals, always ready to indignantly accuse conservatives of "questioning my patriotism," start suggesting their political opponents are "committing treason," the hypocrisy merits notice. Doubly so when the allegation of treason is made on a website that takes money from George Soros. In a July 20 column on Alternet…

It was contentious and dramatic. On Sunday, June 19, “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace grilled funnyman Jon Stewart on his obvious liberal bias and Stewart replied, “… there is not a designed ideological agenda on my part to affect partisan change ...” The exchange got heated when Stewart held that line, telling Wallace, “You can’t understand, because of the world you live in, that there…

In an unbylined update of the latest developments in the budget-tax-spending-debt ceiling discussions in Washington this morning, the Associated Press committed several blunders in attempting to explain what's going on and how we got to where we are. First and foremost was its list identifying "contributors" to the $8.5 trillion growth in the national debt since 2001. Here's the AP's you-can'…

I've been trying to resist taking satisfaction in David Cay Johnston's utter humiliation on his first assignment at Reuters. Y'know, there but for the grace of God, etc. I do wish him well, though I question whether the feeling is mutual. More important, I hope he recognizes the need to go into journalistic rehab. My guess is that he doesn't. The former New York Times journalist/reporter (…