Double Standards

We've seen Chris "Thrill Going Up My Leg" Matthews. Keith Olbermann admits to MSNBC viewers that his network doesn't give a "hard time" to Democratic candidates. Olbermann defends Barack Obama by humilating Matthews. Democratic stalwarts Lanny Davis and Ed Rendell blast MSNBC for not being fair to Hillary Clinton and for [Keith Olbermann] saying things that should put him on the Obama campaign…

The New York Times is in the midst of publishing a series of articles called "American Exception." Its purpose is to "examine commonplace aspects of the American justice system that are virtually unique in the world." The latest in the series is by Adam Liptak. It carries a June 12 date, and is called "Out of Step With Allies, U.S. Defends Freedom to Offend." If you think this is yet another "…

Conservative criticism of Michelle Obama has no merit whatsoever and serves only as an outlet of right-wing hatred. That's the impression that Los Angeles Times reporter Robin Abcarian leaves readers with his June 11 story, "The GOP takes aim at Michelle Obama.":They loved to hate Hillary Rodham Clinton. They loved to hate Teresa Heinz Kerry. And now, it appears, conservative voices are…

Answer: Just two videos (see screencap at right).Inspired by featured CNN.com video of a McCain gaffe -- wherein the Arizona senator says he'd veto every beer -- I decided to search the CNN.com Web site for video of Obama gaffes.I got a grand total of two.Now, to be fair, searching "McCain gaffe" yielded no videos of McCain gaffes, but one from November 2006 entitled "Kerry's gift of gaffe,"…

The supposedly surprising rejection of the Lieberman-Warner climate bill last week had an element that Old Media in the US hasn't covered, but is very relevant. While the press is ever eager to jump on politicians who fly in the face of supposed "world opinion" when it goes against US positions and traditions, it has been virtually silent over how "the rest of the world" has been rejecting the…

"Republicans Block Taxes on Big Oil Profits" blares the teaser headline on the front page of CBSNews.com. Under a graphic of the Capitol dome and a fuel gauge nearing empty, the caption reads "Senate GOP Stops Dems' Effort To Rein In Profits Of Largest Oil Companies As Gas Prices Soar."That's a lot of bias packed into 24 words, and that's before the reader gets to the actual article. Notice the…

MRC President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell appeared on the June 10 "Fox & Friends" to discuss yet another poll noting that the public perceive what the MRC has documented for nearly 21 years: the media are not only biased ideologically, they tailor campaign coverage in a way that goes softer on candidates they favor, such as Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).For example, Bozell note, the…

"An ambassador is an honest man sent abroad to lie for the good of his country."—attributed to Sir Henry Wotton (1568–1639), British diplomat.If Sir Henry were around today, he might offer a corollary: a communications director is a man sent to meet with the media to fib for the good of his candidate. In the current campaign, the tactic's most transparent practitioner would seem to be Robert…

Sen. Barack Obama is now the Democratic presidential nominee, to the approval of no doubt much of the New York Times' news team, which has lifted the Illinois senator throughout the campaign, and nudging Sen. Hillary Clinton towards stage right, even as she continued to win primaries. Times Watch's rough count of Times news stories since Thanksgiving 2007 shows a nearly 3-1 ratio of positive-to-…

New York Times legal reporter Neil Lewis's Wednesday filing was headlined "Stark Contrasts Between McCain and Obama in Judicial Wars." But the truly "stark contrast" was how Lewis treated the respective camps with regard to their hypothetical Supreme Court nominations. Lewis painted an uninvolved McCain as paying "fealty" to "the conservative faithful," while an engaged Obama would be merely…

Before Scott McClellan was President Bush’s Press Secretary, there was Ari Fleischer, and when Fleischer left the White House he wrote his own book, “Taking Heat: The President, the Press, and My Years in the White House.” Unlike McClellan, Fleischer did not take pot shots at his former employer, but did include some telling examples of the liberal bias of press.Perhaps not surprisingly, then,…

Barack Obama's penchant for gaffes is hardly anything new, but as the Illinois Democrat has come closer and closer to becoming the official Democratic presidential nominee, it seems the mainstream media have become less and less likely to note his gaffes. A cursory Web search finds a few instances of the mainstream media picking up on Obama gaffes in 2007, when Sen. Clinton was well ahead of…

Also see the compare-and-contrast example in the final paragraph. A city councilman in Lorain, Ohio, a city of about 75,000 west of Cleveland, was arrested during a prostitution sting on Friday. Of the six stories I found covering the event (the Google News search is for May 22-26), only one referred to the political party of councilman Dennis Flores, who is a Democrat (scroll down to "Second…