Labeling

John Avlon, who has modeled himself as a "no labels" moderate, acted as a liberal on Tuesday's New Day on CNN, as he gave his take on Monica Lewinsky's recent "cyberbullying" speech. Avlon praised the "so thoughtful and funny speech, and contended that "it reminds us 16 years after that constitutional crisis – that celebrity-driven scandal – the human collateral damage in that political witch…

Josh Lederman's report this morning at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, treats President Barack Obama's return to Chicago as a trip down memory lane: "Obama got glimpses of a simpler time when his life was for the most part, normal: the unpaid bills on his desk, the volunteers who pitched in on his first Senate campaign, the day he marched in seven Fourth of July parades."…

CNN legal analyst Mel Robbins acted as an activist for a liberal cause on Monday's CNN Newsroom as the network covered the debate over euthanasia: "I disagree with the 45 states that make it illegal. I think that we should have death with dignity laws." Robbins later played up that "this is happening behind closed doors, and that's why I think these laws are important – to bring it out of the…

The story filed by Politico's Jennifer Epstein after President Barack Obama's campaign appearance in Upper Marlboro, Maryland yesterday seemed evenhanded enough. Unlike Josh Lederman at the Associated Press, who, as I noted yesterday, failed to report that it happened at all, Epstein even got around to describing how many of those in attendance left the event early: "... once the president…

One would think, based on comparing dispatches from Reuters and the Associated Press, that President Barack Obama must have spoken at two different events in Upper Marlboro, Maryland today. The two dispatches are so radically different in tone and content that they it doesn't seem possible that they both could be from the same event. But they are. Jeff Mason at Reuters (saved here for future…

The White House is apparently feeling pretty full of itself over the fiscal 2014 federal budget result it has just reported. Reacting to the news that this year's deficit was "only" $483.4 billion, White House budget director Shaun Donovan crowed that "This is a return to fiscal normalcy." The press, of course including Andrew Taylor at the Associated Press, has accepted all of this with little…

CBS, USA Today, and the Associated Press all sang from the same sheet of music on Saturday, as they covered the end of the Catholic bishops' Extraordinary Synod on the Family. On CBS Evening News, Jim Axelrod played up a supposed "deep split over the direction Pope Francis wants to take the Church," after the Church's leaders rejected controversial language about homosexuals and divorced…

On October 8, Andrew Taylor at the Associated Press wrote that "(President Barack) Obama inherited a trillion-dollar-plus deficit after the 2008 financial crisis." In a NewsBusters post later that day, I pegged Obama's true inheritance at roughly $245 billion as of when he was first sworn into office, and at about $600 billion if projected over the full fiscal year. The actual deficit for fiscal…

Two abortion stories in Thursday's New York Times, one on a fight over Texas abortion clinics that could wind up at the Supreme Court, the other a local story about a Planned Parenthood..."health clinic for women" opening in Queens, put on display the paper's broad and deep bias on the topic.

Radical leftist Michael Moore unsurprisingly picked up where MSNBC's Krystal Ball left off and politicized the ongoing Ebola scare in the U.S. by pointing the finger at the NRA and other regular targets of ire among his ideological fellow travelers. On Thursday, Moore devoted a series of posts on Twitter to an anti-conservative rant about the disease outbreak.

The CBS This Morning anchors stayed true to their reputation of playing softball with liberal guests, while badgering conservative/traditional ones with their Wednesday interview of Cardinal Timothy Dolan. Norah O'Donnell raised the much-hyped midterm report from the bishops' synod underway at the Vatican, and wondered, "How groundbreaking is it for the Catholic Church to raise even that question…

Early this morning, Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post's designated fact-checker gave the left's claims that Republicans alone were responsible for alleged "cuts" to Ebola research four Pinocchios (i.e., a "whopper"). That's nice, but it hardly undoes the damage news outlets like the Associated Press have inflicted on the truth in the apparent name of ginning up resentment among low-information…

On Tuesday, the Big Three networks' morning newscasts carried water for the left-wing Human Rights Campaign by adopting their "seismic shift" label about the midterm report from the Catholic bishops' Extraordinary Synod on the Family. On Good Morning America, ABC's Amy Robach trumpeted that "the Catholic Church appears to be making a seismic shift towards gays and divorcees." Norah O'Donnell also…

Apparently the folks at Vocativ, who took a look at over 600 presidential speeches going all the way back to George Washington, were a little reluctant to document what their "scientific" analysis of those speeches told them about this nation's two most recent chief executives. After finding that there is very little difference between the "sophistication" of speeches made by President Obama and…