Media Bias Debate

On Thursday, New York Times CEO Mark Thompson stopped by CNBC’s Power Lunch to discuss the paper’s subscription numbers since the election and hilariously argued that the newspaper doesn’t display a liberal bias because “we aim to be objective and to tell people straightforwardly what's happening.”

On Thursday's Morning Joe, the panel discussed TIME Magazine's latest cover of White House Chief Strategist and Special Counselor Steve Bannon captioned "The Great Manipulator." It is imporant to note, unlike former Bush senior adviser Karl Rove and former Obama adviser David Axelrod, Bannon has been dubbed as if he is the "president's brain." The former was on the cover of TIME in 2005, while…

On Wednesday, the White House took the historic step to involve four journalists from outside Washington D.C. in the Daily Press Briefing, but it didn’t sit well with many establishment media types inside the Beltway and New York City who complained they were too soft for their liking.

Republican members of Congress met in Philadelphia last weekend for what was called a retreat. It might have been more accurately labeled an advance. Perhaps not since the days of Franklin Roosevelt's first term has so much been done by so few that will potentially impact so many (to paraphrase Winston Churchill in a completely different context).

The Associated Press reports that President Donald Trump is "dogged by insecurity over his loss of the popular vote" and over "media coverage," but I have a different idea about whose insecurity is on display. The entire liberal establishment and rank-and-file leftists remain in denial over Trump's victory. They convinced themselves from the beginning that Trump was a joke who stood no chance of…

Should the mainstream media lead, to borrow a term from religion, a great awakening? Yes, in a sense, suggested longtime journalist Steven Waldman in a Thursday Washington Monthly piece. “Donald Trump and his campaign have pushed the idea that each of us has our own truth, or ‘alternative facts,’” wrote Waldman. “Suddenly I feel like journalists are the most religious people in America. I don’t…

Daily Kos founder and publisher Markos Moulitsas is pleased that “several media operations have decided to join reality [by] calling the Trump regime’s lies what they are -- lies.” Still stuck in unreality, according to Kos, is NPR, which, he alleged on Wednesday, “remains steadfastly committed to enabling the ruling regime’s propaganda efforts.” Kos fumed that “conservatives rally around…

In an online column about the mainstream media, the Washington Post’s Erik Wemple conceded that claims of liberal media bias have "documentary backing.” Wemple reported on efforts by the New York Times to make their paper more diverse, though not necessarily ideologically so. 

Appearing as a panel member on Thursday's Anderson Cooper 360, CNN chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour went on a rant against Steve Bannon and the Donald Trump White House over their criticism of the media, as she likened the administration to "totalitarian regimes" and suggested that they were "angling for an order of merit" from the presidents of Egypt, Russia and Turkey.

During a panel discussion on Firday’s NBC Today examining President Trump’s first week in office, co-host Matt Lauer fretted over the new administration’s willingness to call out the liberal media: “[Trump] ran on this...idea that the media is bad and dishonest. Now his chief strategist at the White House, Steve Bannon, has given an interview to The New York Times....Quote, “The media should be…

On Thursday afternoon, our friends at RedState flagged this peculiar development that ABC News refused an exchange from the David Muir-President Trump interview where Trump scolded Muir for the media’s lack of coverage of the March for Life versus the Women’s March on Washington. 

When it comes to protests, the national mainstream media plays a deceptive numbers game. For instance, the press gave huge coverage to last weekend’s March for Women, which drew a reported 200,000 people protesting the Trump Administration and allegedly proclaimed solidarity with women. 

NYU journalism prof Jay Rosen thinks that for the time being, mainstream media outlets should give inexperienced reporters -- interns -- what’s typically considered among the juiciest of plum assignments: White House correspondent. That, he argued in a Sunday piece on his site PressThink, would be a far more effective way of covering the current administration than we have now. Rosen wrote that…

Wednesday night was a major first for Donald Trump as ABC aired his very first interview as President of the United States. The interview questions ranged from immigration policy to what carpet he chose for the Oval Office (Ronald Reagan’s), but things got awkward for interviewer David Muir when he tried to stick Trump with questions about the Women’s March on Saturday, “Let me just ask you while…