Double Standards

Liberal journalism professor Jay Rosen was puzzled when Washington Post columnist Dan Froomkin wondered aloud whether he and other journalists should be skeptical of Barack Obama. Conservative blogger Jon Henke was downright flabbergasted: I'm not sure I understand why this is even a question. Indeed, it would seem to me that it would be grounds for immediate dismissal. "Immediate dismissal"…

For at least ten seconds there, it appeared Margaret Warner thought PBS stood for the Palestinian Broadcast Service. On last night's NewsHour Ms. Warner, whilst interviewing Israel's Ambassador to the United States Sallai Meridor, posed one of the dumbest questions in the long, dumb history of broadcast journalism.  So banal was her query that there was for nearly five seconds the most pregnant…

Failing to Grace the WaPo Front PageThe Washington Post has certainly taken a timeworn media tack in it's coverage of the latest instance of Israel stubbornly insisting on continuing to exist.  That being: keep nearly all mentions of the prolonged and incessant attacks of Israel by the Palestinians off the front page and to an absolute minimum, then deliver maximum coverage of the Israelis'…

History will tell that the New York Times actually endorsed John McCain as its preferred Republican nominee, albeit in a hold-your-nose fashion. History will also tell that the paper began souring on its former favorite "maverick" and moderate Republican almost immediately after he clinched the nomination and becoming the only thing standing between the White House and a historic Democratic…

I held this item for a couple of days after I found it because I didn't want to spoil Christmas. Readers can fairly criticize me for waiting. It is truly astonishing how little attention this two week-old story has received (Warning: Very disturbing content; the underlying news at caritas.org is here; bolds are mine) Out of food, Zimbabweans eating cow dung Harare, Dec 10, 2008 / 08:01 pm --…

In 2005, I sensed that journalists in general prefer to call this time of the year in commerce that of “holiday shopping” instead of “Christmas shopping,” but that when it came to people losing their jobs, they preferred to describe layoffs as relating to “Christmas.” My instincts have been proven correct during the past three years. So did anything change in 2008? Not that much, but slightly in…

You would think from reading yesterday afternoon's report by the Associated Press's Tom Murphy that companies like Toyota, Nissan, and Honda are not that far from finding themselves in the situations US taxpayer bailout recipients General Motors and Chrysler are in. Murphy tries mightily to make the foreign-owned companies' situations look serious, at one point even putting out the howler that…

In its year-ending double issue Newsweek couldn't resist injecting liberal media bias into its mini obituaries entitled "Remember Them Well."Yet the newsmagazine seemed to forget, perhaps intentionally, the left-of-center politics of prominent liberals profiled while using terms like "far-right" to describe the politics of deceased conservatives such as Paul Weyrich. But wait, there's more,…

Journalists, consider yourselves warned. Columbia Journalism Review worries government-run health care might not come to pass; indeed, ideas for consumer-driven health care could "seep" into media coverage. CJR's Trudy Lieberman announced it was "ominous news" that a government health insurance plan might be delayed: "Ezra Klein over at The American Prospect’s blog was right on point last week…

CNN, which long ago abandoned the concept of credible journalism, ran a story today regarding the attack by Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi on our nation's President as a feel good story about the shoe industry.The title itself reveals that CNN reporters simply can't contain their giddiness when it comes to covering someone attacking the President:Bush assailant kick-starts sales for…

As NewsBuster Dan Gainor has noted, Playboy Mexico thought it could make some pesos by peddling an issue with a scantily-clad Virgin Mary on the cover—just in time for Christmas.  Today's Los Angeles Times contains an editorial denouncing the tasteless stunt.  All well and good.  But it set me to wondering.  Did the LAT protest similar outrages against religous symbols when they appeared in the…

Associated Press writer Glen Johnson's story on the indictment of a close friend of Salvatore DiMasi, Massachusetts's Democratic Speaker of the House, is the latest in a long line of fairly long stories about Democratic politicians in trouble that fails to identify their party affiliation.The story names a half-dozen politicians, all of whom are Democrats, without identifying the party of any of…

With Obama-Blagojevich, and many other Dems in distress, the media has suddenly lost interest in the subject Editor's Note: This first appeared in today's Human Events. When It's the Democrats, the Media Falls SilentWe are now a week into the wall-to-wall coverage of the tape recorded fall of Senate seat auctioneer and sometime Illinois Democratic Governor Rod Blagojevich.  But there has…