Labeling

The “big three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC on Thursday night insisted President Barack Obama’s latest Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, is nothing but a “moderate” and personally pleaded with Republicans to consider placing him on the Court. While two networks mentioned comments made by Vice President Joe Biden back in 1992 about Court appointments, none of them made light of the…

The New York Times did its best to begin the Supreme Court debate by mainstreaming Judge Merrick Garland, President Obama’s nominee, as a “brilliant” “centrist” and moderate voice of reason. Reporters Michael Shear and Gardiner Harris treated the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit with kid gloves in the paper’s initial reporting Wednesday, with the same kind of pro-…

On Wednesday, CNN quickly ran to label President Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, as a "moderate" and a "consensus candidate." Jake Tapper contended that "this seems like a fairly-establishment, moderate pick." Pamela Brown first responded by underlining that there's "no doubt about it;" but moments later, she revealed that Judge Garland "may carry on Obama's legacy when it comes…

The business press's determination to convince the public that weak economic news is really strong seemingly knows no bounds. Today, shortly after the Federal Reserve's Industrial Production report for February showed a seasonally adjusted 0.5 percent decline — worse than expectations of -0.3 percent — the Associated Press pretended in its headline and in reporter Christopher Rugaber's first…

New York Times congressional reporter Carl Hulse spread more publicity in support of classless Democratic pressure tactics on  Senate Judiciary Committee. Using idisruptive, chanting college students borrowed from liberal activist groups, Democrats are trying to force a vote on a still-hypothetical Obama Supreme Court nomination to fill the seat of the late Antonin Scalia. Hulse's column, “A…

On Monday's All In, MSNBC's Joy Reid oddly asserted that "what could end up saving the Republican Party" from a Donald Trump nomination is "the snobbery of the Founding Fathers and the early proponents of the system, because the popular vote...doesn't choose the nominee. It's chosen at the state conventions. It's chosen by party insiders."

Today's report from the government on February's retail sales was awful. Last month's sales fell by 0.1 percent, which was bad enough. Beyond that, January's originally reported 0.2 percent increase was revised down to a 0.4 percent decrease. Additionally, as I noted at my home blog this morning, January's seasonally adjusted revision should have been much worse, based on how terrible that month'…

Layers of editors and fact-checkers at the Columbus (OH) Dispatch and others involved in its production "somehow" failed to detect the creation of an obviously false caption to a campaign rally photo of Donald Trump taken by a St. Louis Post-Dispatch photographer. The photo, taken on Friday at Trump's St. Louis appearance by the Post-Dispatch's David Carson, had the following caption, apparently…

Retail giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc. apparently got on the good side of the Associated Press a year ago when it announced that would be raising entry-level wages. Since that announcement, AP, in particular wire service reporter Anne D'Innocenzio, has been excusing the company's relatively poor financial performance while complimenting it for a virtually imaginary "perk up" in sales. Falling profits…

Sometimes there's a problem when a far-left reporter admiringly covers a far-left political official or candidate. What occasionally happens is that items which would clearly be objectionable to sensible people make it to print or onto the airwaves because the lefty journalist doesn't recognize how problematic they are. If he or she did, it would be kept out of their reports. At NBC News, former…

From reading most establishment press news, especially their economy-related reports, you'd think that those who are complaining about the current U.S. economy are outliers — especially the millions of Americans who are angry about it. Though they sometimes acknowledge that forward progress  since the recession hasn't been robust, the media's meme-makers have mostly told us that "overall job…

For the "Freedom for me, and not for thee" file: Donald Trump decided to cancel a campaign rally in Chicago tonight "due to safety concerns after protesters packed the arena where it was to take place." An Associated Press report time-stamped at 10:12 p.m., like so many AP reports in similar circumstances before subsequent revisions "clean things up," so to speak, has some elements of balance,…

Friday's CBS Evening News gave a one-sided preview of a euthanasia segment on an upcoming episode of 60 Minutes. The nearly two-minute long segment from Dr. Jon LaPook featured two of the most prominent supporters of euthanasia proponent Brittany Maynard — her husband, Dan Diaz, and the doctor who prescribed the lethal drugs she used to kill herself in November 2014. Scott Pelley noted that Dr.…