Media Bias Debate

For the cover story of its February issue, Vanity Fair profiled FNC’s Kelly File host Megyn Kelly and while they charted her admirable rise to primetime, work ethic, devotion to her family, and fair interviewing skills, the liberal magazine heavily touted examples of her holding the feet of conservatives to the fire and praise from liberal journalists like Chris Matthews and Katie Couric. It made…

Since last night, Matt Drudge has teased his link to CNN's coverage of Hillary Clinton "heckler" Katherine Prudhomme O'Brien with the following headline: "Clinton heckled in NH by rape survivor." The headline at CNN's story by Dan Merica is quite different: "NH GOP lawmaker heckles Hillary Clinton over Bill Clinton's sex scandals." The headline difference is not unusual. What is unusual is that…

Media bias is hydra-headed in its perniciousness.  It operates on many levels - in many ways.  One of its practitioners’ favorite moves is the terrible headline.  In which they knowingly - or unknowingly - tip their hand on the story at hand.  These heinous headlines can effectively work to sway casual, drive-by media consumers - who don’t go deep into multiple articles to get a more fully-formed…

Mika Brzezinski has let the cat out of the MSM bag. On today's Morning Joe, Mika admitted that the press corps covering Donald Trump can't be objective about him: "it's like their skin is crawling." Brzezinski said reporters "ooze with a lack of objectivity" when covering Trump, adding "you can sort of see it in their kind of like smiling, sort of slyly and uncomfortably and almost snarkily…

In his most recent Washington Post column, Fareed Zakaria, who also works at CNN, told readers that "working-class whites" can no longer handle the fact that they're not an "elite group" any more, and that this loss of status explains an alarming increase in suicide in their ranks. Supposedly, these people support Donald Trump because his "Making America Great Again" is about putting them back on…

A time-honored tactic in political TV ads is to use contrasting degrees of photographic exposure, one bright and snappy for your candidate and a darker hue, sometimes even going to old-fashioned black-and-white, for your opponent. On December 29, at the Washington Post's Wonkblog, Max Ehrenfreund cited a conveniently timed "study" which looked at 2008 ads produced by and on behalf of GOP…

On Wednesday, Nate Cohn at the New York Times, who by some accounts is being anointed the next Nate Silver of polling, made a clumsy and despicable attempt to inject race into his political "analysis" of the Donald Trump phenomenon. Cohn's tediously long writeup, which made Page A3 in the New York version of the Old Gray Lady's print edition on Thursday, attempted to identify and characterize…

The Wall Street Journal ran a blockbuster story Tuesday afternoon ("U.S. Spy Net on Israel Snares Congress") about how the Obama administration's National Security Agency's "targeting of Israeli leaders swept up the content of private conversations with U.S. lawmakers." In other words, the NSA spied on Congress. As talk-show host and commentator Erick Erickson drily observed: "Congress began…

If Paul Waldman had wanted to put the main argument of his Monday American Prospect column in Obamaesque terms, he might have written that conservative opponents of political correctness have gotten bitter and are clinging to their supposed right (and maybe even their duty) to act like jerks. “For today's Republican, if people think you're a jerk then you must be doing something right, and the…

This week, the Associated Press wrapped up a year of largely pathetic business reporting with three items exemplifying the wire service's habits of data-twisting, sloppiness, and convenient omissions. A deceptive AP post-Christmas story pretended that Christmas-season "spending" was twice as high as anyone else has predicted. A report on pending home sales omitted a concerned comment from a…

Closing out 2015 on the Thursday morning newscasts, NBC’s Today churned one of its most fawning pieces on President Obama as NBC News correspondent Ron Allen reviewed Obama’s top photos by White House photographer Pete Souza while hushed, soft piano music played in the background. 

In September, President Barack Obama "committed the U.S. to a new blueprint to eliminate poverty and hunger around the world" in a speech at a United Nations "global summit." A review of his speech's transcript indicates that while he acknowledged the ugly reality that "800 million men, women and children are scraping by on less than $1.25 a day," he made no mention of the fact that just three…

With New Year’s Eve upon us, NBC’s Today dedicated a segment in its 9:00 a.m. hour on Thursday to looking back at the year in news, politics, and entertainment. Not surprisingly, the liberal network made no mention of the Planned Parenthood baby parts video scandal, Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server, the Clinton Foundation scandal, and Benghazi to name just a few.

Appearing on Wednesday’s edition of The Kelly File, MRC President Brent Bozell and Fox News contributor Judith Miller made the case to fill-in host Sandra Smith that Donald Trump’s recent pledge to begin airing millions of dollars in television ads is not exactly necessary given the fact that the liberal media have been giving Trump a lion’s share of their 2016 election coverage.