Double Standards

On Tuesday’s "Good Morning America," anchors Robin Roberts and Diane Sawyer touted the marital relationship between Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards and his wife. Co-host Robin Roberts recounted the often repeated story of how the Edwards couple spend their wedding anniversary, including their recent 30th, at the restaurant Wendy’s. Roberts, perhaps in a Freudian slip, even…

Previous NewsBusters posts by Brent Baker and Rusty Weiss have noted the "strange" and nearly complete memory loss exhibited by the TV networks (with the expected exception of fair and balanced Fox News) and the Associated Press concerning the political party affiliation of just-jailed Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. The New York Times's record during the past seven months has been almost equally…

To paraphrase a line from my good friend B. Spears, ‘Oops, the AP did it again!' What journalistic crime has been committed this time? How about, selective memory when it comes to a Democrat running afoul of the law. Picture this if you will. The Mayor of a major U.S. city has been ordered to jail for violating bond. The MSM reports on the situation, but fails to mention the Mayor's…

Is reporter Michael Powell at the New York Times auditioning for Comic Relief? At next year's event, Powell's headline at his August 2 story (HT Weapons of Mass Discussion) about Obama's repeated hypocritical invocations and charges relating to race (of course, that's not how he sees it), along with his report's first 10 words, would bring the house down: With Genie Out of Bottle, Obama Is…

Barack Obama is again unfairly throwing out the race card at an opponent. This week Obama was warning that his Republican opponents will assault him with racist attacks, but is dropping this warning even though no one has yet done so. On July 30th, Obama said at three different campaign stops in Missouri that McCain and his backers will attack him because he "doesn't look like all those other…

Imagine if the principal of a Catholic school in the metro D.C. region was found guilty of failing to report an allegation of child sexual abuse. It'd be considered worthy of front page news for the Washington Post, at the very least a front pager for the paper's Metro section.Yet reporting the conviction of Abdalla I. Al-Shabnan on July 31, the Post buried the story on the 6th page of the Metro…

"McCain Goes Negative, Worrying Some in G.O.P.," the New York Times fretted Wednesday in a headline over a story by reporter Michael Cooper. Times readers learned that while it's perfectly acceptable for the Times to call conservative Sen. Tom Coburn "Dr. No" in a front-page headline, it's bad for John McCain to call Barack Obama the same thing.Cooper opened his story:In recent days Senator John…

The Denver Post printed an article on July 30 highlighting the possible selection of Mitt Romney as a vice-presidential running mate with John McCain. While focusing on several obvious areas in which Romney may help the ticket, the Post simply couldn't resist a few subtle jabs directed at the former Massachusetts Governor. Making a personal assessment that Romney sometimes comes off as…

Is it okay to vote against a candidate because of his race? The answer to the question is no. It is, in fact, the only acceptable answer. But I ask the question because it raises an important point about the media, the Democrats, and Barack Obama himself. We are, each year, treated to national media reports on race relations in this country and they invariably discuss white America coming to…

Does the media treat Democrats and Republicans differently when stories of their various peccadillos reach the Press? Well, in actuality, the question is essentially a moot point. There are stories today on the NewsBusters front page testifying to said bias. However, in Yahoo! News' choice of front-page stories today, we can see yet another example of this bias.

UPDATE:  The original version of this item reported Joe Scarborough's statement, as transcribed below, that there were no Republicans on his MSNBC staff, with  executive producer Chris Licht confirming Joe's assertion. Joe has been in touch to say he and Chris Licht were speaking tongue in cheek and that the remarks about there being no Republicans on the Morning Joe staff were a joke.Mika…

The networks suggest Obama is driving the narrative, but it's the liberal press themselves doing the driving for Obama (Editor's Note: This essay originally appeared today in Human Events.) Just Another Clown Delivering the News The Big Three networks just foisted a week long Obamathon upon the American people, a political, "journalistic" perversion of Jerry Lewis's annual televised good…