Media Bias Debate

In the latter portion of Thursday night’s CNN “town hall” with President Barack Obama on gun control, host Anderson Cooper surprisingly pushed back at the President’s slam on opponents of his executive actions and policies on guns as conspiracy theorists.

In the days leading up to President Obama’s Guns In America townhall on CNN Thursday night, the network bent over backwards to hail the President’s side on gun control and belittle those in favor of the Second Amendment. The hour leading into the event at George Mason University was no different as Erin Burnett OutFront and fill-in host Kate Bolduan hailed the upcoming event as “historic event”…

Near the top of the Wednesday monologue of his eponymous TBS show, Conan O’Brien joked that Donald Trump reminded him of Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini in the way he sculpts his hair and interacts with crowds. Upon pretending to form his hair into more like Trump’s, O’Brien remarked: “I like that Mussolini thing he does. He looks out at the crowd. He's got this guy on his head.”

Along with skipping on Wednesday night the successful congressional vote to repeal ObamaCare and defund Planned Parenthood, the “big three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC also declined to dedicate a second of airtime to the Canadien energy company TransCanada filing lawsuits against the Obama administration for having rejected the Keystone XL pipeline.

While interviewing Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz for the Wednesday edition of ABC’s World News Tonight, Republican campaign correspondent Tom Llamas demanded Cruz explain how he could “be a president and hate the Democrats and hate the culture of Washington so much and be effective.”

Give columnist Paul Waldman credit for coming up with a real grabber of a lead: “Get ready, America: we're about to take a long and unpleasant journey back down Bill Clinton's pants.” Less amusing is the rest of Waldman’s Monday American Prospect piece, which trashed Republicans for raising the 42nd president’s sexual behavior as an issue in the current campaign. Waldman jeered at GOPers for “…

On Wednesday night, the major network evening newscasts all failed to cover the first full, successful congressional vote to repeal of ObamaCare and defund of Planned Parenthood that will go to President Obama’s desk where he’ll likely veto the measures seeking to undo his health care law and strike federal funding from the nation’s largest provider of abortions. Providing a more balanced…

I have long marveled at liberals' air of superiority and lack of self-reflection, which have always been particularly evident among liberal media elites and journalists. They tend to view themselves as sacrosanct and above scrutiny. Perhaps this attitude sprang from the British and, later, American tradition that the press is the Fourth Estate. It doesn't just serve to inform the people and make…

Today was a fairly brisk day for economic data, as four noteworthy reports were released. One of them contained good news, but with a heavy asterisk. The other three were either not good, period, or came in below expectations. Readers here probably know which one the Associated Press was still carrying at its Top Business Stories page as of 2:39 p.m. Of course, it was the one with good news.

In November and December, the New York Daily News characterized the NRA and its CEO Wayne LaPierre as a jihadists and terrorists. Now it has set its sights on Republican Party presidential candidates and leaders who are defending the plain, Supreme Court-upheld wording of the Constitution's Second Amendment and Congress's power to make laws over lawless presidential actions. Wednesday's NYDN…

Appearing as a guest on Wednesday's New Day on CNN, Candy Carson -- wife of GOP presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson -- complained about the tendency for the media to "attack people with untruths," asserting that "some of the media is unethical," when she was asked about the scrutiny her husband has received during the campaign.

After having spent seven and a half minutes on Tuesday trumpeting President Obama’s executive actions on gun control, CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley eventually turned his newscast to the 2016 election and invoked Ronald Reagan in lecturing Republicans that “he wouldn't recognize the melee just four weeks before Iowa.”

On Monday, the Institute for Supply Management's Manufacturing Index for December came in showing contraction for the second consecutive month, and with a slightly worse reading (48.2 percent, versus 48.6 percent in November; any reading below 50 percent signifiies contraction). These two results followed readings which just slipped over the expansion bar (50.2 and 50.1 percent, respectively) in…

Tuesday’s editions of ABC’s World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News aired nowhere near the exhaustive coverage of President Obama’s executive actions on gun control that the CBS Evening News did, but they were not short on fawning language for Obama’s “rallying cry...after years of anger and frustration” in what ABC hyped as “[t]he showdown after the President breaks down.”