Double Standards

Rarely do the media put their institutional political bias on public display, but this past weekend, America's news industry titans left no doubt that they're fully behind one of the nation's most radical cultural and political movements.  ABC, AP, CBS, CNN, Fox, NBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the corporate owners of USA Today, the Miami Herald, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution…

In case traditional news outlets "forget" to tell you, Uncle Sam announced this morning that second-quarter Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth was revised sharply upward to 3.3% from the late July's advance estimate of 1.9%. Dude, where's my recession? Y'know, the recession that Barack Obama claimed we "almost certainly in" back in mid-July? Believe it or not, there are supposedly legitimate…

Fox News Channel host Bill O'Reilly cited the Media Research Center's latest special report, "Obama's Margin of Victory: The Media," in the midst of the "Unresolved Problems" segment for his August 26 program.:There is no doubt that NBC News continues to be in the tank for Barack Obama. According to a Media Research Center study, NBC is the most lopsided network in favor of Barack. Pro-Obama…

The back-and-forth over Jerome Corsi's book, "The Obama Nation," has been heated, largely unfair to the author, and predictably marred by attacks from allegedly "objective" journalists as well as Democratic mouthpieces (but I repeat myself). Blatant examples of media bias have been noted by several NewsBusters posters, including Tim Graham (here, here, and here), Geoff Dickens, Mark Finkelstein,…

Earlier today I noted how Associated Press reporter Ed White noted that Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick (D) will not be able to leave Michigan to travel to the Democratic Convention in Denver later this month. Kilpatrick, White also noted, is a superdelegate.But White returned to AP form later on August 15 with a story published shortly before 5 p.m. EDT entitled "Detroit mayor to stand trial on…

For years, the New York Times has praised misleading books from liberal authors attacking President Bush and the war in Iraq: Tomes by Michael Moore, Seymour Hersh, Kitty Kelley, Richard Clarke, Jane Mayer, and Ron Suskind (who has also reported for the paper) -- too many to mention. Yet when a wildly successful book appears that attacks the Times's favored candidate, Democrat nominee Barack…

At least, that's what James Rainey would like you to believe. Further review of Rainey's piece shows that the examples he highlights of supposedly equal and fawning treatment of John McCain and Barack Obama is not so equal.In fact, so ridiculous are the comparisons, I thought for a moment  the joke was on me--that Rainey's piece was a send-up of local media, a SNL-style parody.But there's no joke…

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's party registration as a Democrat is hardly a state secret, yet rarely does the Associated Press mention the indicted politician's party affiliation.The AP continued its tradition of shielding Democratic pols in trouble with the law in its August 12 article, "Detroit Mayor Wins Round in Court."(excerpt below): (AP) A judge ruled Tuesday that Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick…

Blame the economy.In addition to Elizabeth Edwards, the source (National Enquirer), and plain old bias, add economic hardship to the list of reasons the MSM failed to investigate the Edwards scandal. Howard Kurtz, in his "Media Notes" column surveyed the scene surrounding the deafening silence of the media gatekeepers:By early last week, journalists were in the awkward position of refusing to…

As the latest episode of Detroit's Kwame Kilpatrick Calamity has played out, we learn that there is a supplemental directive to add to the Associated Press's apparent commandment ("Thou shalt not name a Democrat's party") about politicians in trouble whose party mascot happens to be the donkey. Several previous Kilpatrick-related AP reports, including this one from two weeks ago, have been cited…

Yesterday, in a stinging indictment of his Old Media colleagues' la-la-la treatment of the story of John Edwards's affair with Rielle Hunter, Los Angeles Times columnist Tim Rutten asserted that Edwards "may have ended his public life but he certainly ratified an end to the era in which traditional media set the agenda for national political journalism." I'll get to Rutten's mostly perceptive…

When Washington Post columnist and, until recently, regular Countdown guest Dana Milbank used an edited quote from Barack Obama that was arguably a distortion of the Illinois Senator's words, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann suspended Milbank from appearing on his show insisting Milbank correct his transgression against the Democratic presidential candidate. But if Olbermann's MSNBC bosses held him to…