Double Standards

Catching up on an item from Friday night, the three broadcast evening newscasts aired virtually nothing on January 23 about President Obama’s executive order permitting federal funding of abortions, overturning orders signed by President Bush in his first week in office back in 2001. Both CBS and NBC’s White House reporters squeezed in a single sentence about Obama’s action during stories about…

For 8 years, life was good and easy for the liberal political cartoon community--they had George W. Bush & Dick Cheney to kick around. With hardly a care in the world, they boldly spoke truth to power, at immense personal risk to themselves, and quietly stacked their Pulitzers for being so bold and courageous and funny. Then along came Barack Obama--the cool, handsome, African-American…

I guess President Josiah Bartlet, the mythical president in The West Wing television series, would have been pleased. Jonathan Martin at Politico.com reports that the Obama Administration is concentrating lots of power at the top (bolds are mine):West Wing on steroids in Obama W.H. President Barack Obama is taking far-reaching steps to centralize decision-making inside the White House,…

The New York Times reports that the music played just before Barack Obama took the presidential oath of office was not live (the photo at right is at the Times story via the Associated Press).  At least one reporter who might be expected to know better wrote a review of the performance that would lead readers to believe that she thought it was live. Here are the first few paragraphs from Daniel…

Reportedly few Republicans see reason to ultimately vote against confirming Obama's attorney general designee and the GOP Senate minority has only put a one-week delay on his confirmation hearings, but the Washington Post was insistent in its January 22 headline that that Republican senators were set on "Obstruct[ing] Eric Holder's "Path to [the] Justice Dept."This is markedly different from the…

Sometimes you learn a lot from commenters. I was going through the comments tonight at my Pajamas Media column about the Geithner nomination that went up earlier today, and came across this at Comment 39 from "Mike M": The deduction he took for the summer camp as a day care expense is EXPRESSLY PROHIBITED IN THE IRS CODE! That’s out and out tax fraud. Even Leona Helmsly (sic) is jealous in her…

A 14-picture slideshow of "Historic Moments of Inaugurations Past" that begins with an illustration of Washington's 1793 swearing-in and mostly includes flattering photos of other commanders-in-chief ends not with a photo of President George W. Bush but of left-wing protestors at his first inauguration. (h/t e-mail tipster Chris Lowery)Even President Nixon was shown flashing his "classic double…

The good folks at Media Matters for America are displeased with the New York Times having the nerve to point out the hypocrisy inherent in environmentalists destroying the environment.For those that don't actually care about such things, the Sundance Film Festival began last Thursday, and as the video embedded right demonstrates, the organizers are supposedly going to great lengths to make this…

The Associated Press's record of running interference for Treasury Secretary nominee Timothy Geithner continues mostly unabated.My chronicle of AP's largely weak coverage, most of which has been previously detailed at NewsBusters (here, here, and here), is at the end of this post.No AP report I have seen has noted that Geithner applied for and merely pocketed partial "reimbursements" from the…

"Sometimes, Brian, I think we live in a parallel universe, where the media see the world one way when it's a Democrat in power and another way when a Republican is in power," NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell told Fox News Channel's Brian Kilmeade. [audio of segment available here]The Media Research Center president appeared on the January 16 "Fox & Friends" to discuss an astounding contrast…

Wow. This unbylined Associated Press story (HT Michelle Malkin) doesn't really require any elaboration, except to note one thing -- It ends the debate over the existence of liberal/left media bias: Exit question:

Presumably after having read NewsBusters Senior Editor Rich Noyes's January 14 blog on the matter, the hosts of "Fox & Friends" today discussed the Associated Press's double standard on presidential inauguration spending.STEVE DOOCY: When you look back at how the mainstream media described his [George W. Bush's second] inaugural, back when he spent about $40 million on it... critics, for…

The news media are giddy with excitement as Barack Obama’s Inauguration Day approaches — CNN’s Jim Acosta on Tuesday’s American Morning touted how "Obama has some big shoes to fill, roughly the size of the ones up on the Lincoln Memorial....Barack Obama’s inaugural address may be more than the speech of his lifetime. Historians and speechwriters say it could be one for the ages."But it would be a…