Labeling

According to a poll which is described as the state's "gold standard," Republican U.S. Senate candidate Joni Ernst now leads Bruce Braley, her Democratic Party opponent, in the Iowa U.S. Senate race for the seat being vacated by Democrat Tom Harkin. The Des Moines Register's "Iowa poll" has Ernst up by a six-point margin, 44% - 38%. That Ernst's lead isn't larger is apparently attributable to a…

As I noted Sunday evening, Fox News's Megyn Kelly, on her Friday show, characterized the beheading of Colleen Hufford at the hands of Alton Nolen, if true, as "the first American beheading on American soil reportedly in the name of jihad." It turns out that someone allegedly tried to beat Nolen out for that distinction, and failed. Take a look at what the Oklahoman's Nolan Clay described as a "…

The story of alleged Moore, Oklahoma murderer Alton Nolen, who reportedly beheaded co-worker Colleen Hufford, is fading from the headlines. Barring further developments, I don't expect it to be a news topic on any of the Big Three networks' morning or evening news shows tomorrow. That's because it has already disappeared from prominence at the Associated Press. At 10:20 this morning, the latest…

The establishment press, and now apparently the FBI, have a problem on their hands: an alleged killer who converted to Islam; expressed sentiments favored by terrorists; killed a woman by employing terrorists' favored method, i.e., beheading; shouted Islamic slogans while carrying out his evil deed; and was trying to kill someone else when another armed person shot and wounded him. Their problem…

USA Today, gave the equivalent of almost a full page to Eric Holder's resignation in Friday's print edition. The paper's primary story by Gregory Korte, at the top right of the front page, described him as having "championed gay, civil, voting rights." The item's continuation on Page 8A included a quote from Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, which calls itself "America's…

On Wednesday, CNN's Erin Burnett kissed up to left-wing actress Ashley Judd by promoting her radical feminist take on society. Burnett asserted that "one thing the education system still teaches is a patriarchal view of the world," and quoted from an April 2012 piece that Judd wrote for The Daily Beast: "Patriarchy is not men. Patriarchy is a system in which both men and women participate. It is…

The Politico's Josh Gerstein wants readers not to have a problem with President Barack Obama singing the praises of American exceptionalism when in front of U.S. audiences but deep-sixing it when speaking at the United Nations. Though Obama has almost always avoided actually using the E-word, he has recenlly taken to speaking of this nation's "unique" abilities and capabilities, and for some time…

MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews periodically goes on a tear about his disdain for the term "homeland" to refer to the United States of America. On his September 24 program, Chris Matthews groused it was "ominous" language. But it seems his colleague Al Sharpton never got the memo as he used it just prior to the lead-in to tonight's Hardball. What's more, it seems Matthews himself sometimes uses the…

Twitter users happening upon a Monday evening tweet by the Associated Press's Josh Lederman can be forgiven if they thought they were visiting a parody account. Lederman is a White House reporter for the AP. His LinkedIn profile indicates that his journalism career began about three years ago. His education, up to and including "a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University’s…

This morning (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), I noted that Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis's awful performance in Friday's debate with Republican aspirant Greg Abbott was predictably ignored by the Politico, the New York Times, and the Associated Press's national site. The AP did have a story it apparently limited to distribution within Texas. As I also noted this morning,…

NPR's Jason Beaubien spotlighted a woman's "nightmare with El Salvador's abortion law" on Monday's All Things Considered. Beaubien zeroed in on the case of Christina Quintanilla, who served four years of a thirty-year prison sentence, after a dubious conviction for the death of her unborn child. He also cited unnamed "activists who are pushing to liberalize El Salvador's abortion law [who] argue…

The New York Times fessed up in its Tuesday edition about an erroneous claim it made nearly two weeks earlier. Mark Landler, in his reporting on President Obama's September 10, 2014 prime time address on ISIS, asserted in an article the following morning that "unlike Mr. Bush in the Iraq war, Mr. Obama has sought to surround the United States with partners."

Politico's Kenneth Vogel and Byron Tau filed a long Friday article moaning about how influential opposition research has become in the conduct of this year's political campaigns. My takeaway is that they really don't like it this time around — not because the money involved has increased, and not because supposedly lax campaign-finance laws have accommodated this increase. No, they're really…

On Sunday's Reliable Sources, CNN's Brian Stelter touted a disgraced former representative as a non-partisan pundit and as an expert on media bias: "Now, I could bring in two partisan commentators now to argue about the media, but I'd rather from someone who's been in the glare of the news media – someone who's all too familiar with what happens when you go from darling to bad boy – then, maybe,…