Media Bias Debate

The Census Bureau reported today that new-home sales in November came in at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 490,000. That was a 4.3 percent increase over October, but it only occurred because October was revised steeply downward by 25,000 to 470,000; August and September were also revised slightly downward. Actual sales were 34,000, the highest November figure during the Obama era but lower…

The morning after Washington Post cartoonist Ann Telnaes published (then unpublished) an illustration depicting Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz’s daughters as toy monkeys, calling them “fair game” since they appeared in a campaign ad, ABC’s Good Morning America ignored the story completely while CBS This Morning and NBC’s Today excused it as merely a “feud” and part of “increased…

There was surprising consensus on today's Morning Joe concerning the Washington Post cartoon that depicted Ted Cruz as an organ grinder and his youngs girls as monkeys. From Mika Brzezinski to Joe Scarborough to Harold Ford, Jr., there was universal condemnation of Ann Telnaes' foul image.  Willie Geist said it best: "people look for moments of bias in the media. Here's one right here. You can't…

Just over two weeks after the major network evening newscasts spent 24 minutes obsessing on December 8 over Donald Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims entering the U.S., the three programs returned on Tuesday night to devote ten and a half minutes to Trump’s declaration that Hillary Clinton was “schlonged” in 2008 by losing to then-Senator Barack Obama.

The Media Research Center’s Director of Media Analysis Tim Graham made his latest appearance on the Fox News Channel (FNC) program The O’Reilly Factor Tuesday night for what was quite the lively segment with fill-in host Eric Bolling and ETWN correspondent Lauren Ashburn as Graham and Bolling spared with Ashburn over the media’s obsession with Donald Trump and double standard when it comes to…

As Curtis Houck at NewsBusters reported this evening, the Washington Post published "a disgusting GIF early Tuesday evening depicting (Ted) Cruz’s young daughters as toy monkeys being played with" accompanied by a pathetic two-paragraph justification by cartoonist Ann Telnaes as to why Cruz's daughters "were fair game." The Post withdrew the cartoon and the justification within a few hours, but…

Commenting on Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz’s daughters appearing in a campaign ad, Washington Post cartoonist Ann Telnaes created a GIF early Tuesday evening depicting Cruz’s young daughters as toy monkeys being played with and arguing that “[t]hey are fair game.” In attempting to explain her arguably racist GIF, Telnaes argued that because daughters Caroline and Catherine appeared…

Today's release from the government on economic growth estimated that the nation's Gross Domestic Product grew at an annual rate of 2.0 percent in the third quarter, a slight downward revision from November's estimate of 2.1 percent. This continues the economy's dismal, worst-since-World War II growth performance since the recession officially ended over six years ago. But never fear. According…

The lead segment in the 3:00 p.m. Eastern hour of Tuesday’s CNN Newsroom featured quite the display of verbal fireworks as conservative writer Kurt Schlichter angered fill-in host Don Lemon when he invoked the Clinton sex scandals of the 1990's with former President Clinton turning “his intern into a humidor” while discussing vulgar comments made by Donald Trump.

NPR’s Steve Inskeep continued his media tour on Monday promoting his fawning sit-down interview with President by appearing with CNN Tonight host Don Lemon and, when asked about the President attacking the media for supposedly overhyping threats posed by ISIS, Inskeep stood up for the President by suggesting that it was “not a very outlandish idea that he's putting out there.”

Yesterday, CNBC's Krystina Gustafson opened her article about the state of the Christmas shopping season by reporting that "procrastinators around the U.S. provided a much-needed boost to retailers" last weekend, but that "the lift was likely too little too late to salvage a slow start to the holiday shopping season." The story's headline: "Retailers cut too deep to save the holiday season."…

The business press worships at the altar of seasonally adjusted data. Most journalists covering the economy don't even bother looking at raw, not seasonally adjusted data, which in layman's terms is best understood as "what actually happened." As I have shown for nearly a decade, this is often a big mistake. On the rare occasions when reporters take the initiative to look at the raw data, they…

Seeking to join in on the Star Wars: The Force Awakens hype, MSNBC’s Hardball kicked off Monday’s show with a spoof of the famous franchise’s opening credits that told of a “period of civil war within the Republican party” and “President Obama, Hillary Clinton, & the Republican establishment appear to have formed a coalition rejecting [Donald] Trump’s appeal to the DARK SIDE.”

Did you hear about the university which advertised for "a tenure-track Assistant Professor position that will be filled by a White American or Asian American"? Of course you didn't, because it didn't happen. But it's not difficult to imagine the outrage which would justifiably ensue if such an ad were ever placed. Well, last week it became widely known that the University of Louisville placed an…