Media Bias Debate

The Walt Disney Company filed its annual 10-K report with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday. The "getaway day" timing of the filing may not be a coincidence, at least as far as its 80 percent-owned ESPN subsidiary is concerned. That's because the report contains bad news which Disney would surely want to see downplayed. Confirming problems yours truly observed in NewsBusters…

As yours truly noted in several posts at my home blog on Wednesday and at NewsBusters on Friday and Saturday, the torrent of pre-Thanksgiving "getaway day" economic data was largely disappointing. That didn't stop the Associated Press's Chris Rugaber from pushing the "All is well" meme late Wednesday afternoon, declaring, contrary to what anyone's eyes could see, that "the fundamentals of the U.…

Speaking as part of a panel about presidential books during Sunday’s Face the Nation, author Doris Kearns Goodwin couldn’t help but devote a few moments of her time to heaping praise on the “ambitious” man who she first worked for in politics in then-President Lyndon B. Johnson from the 1960's.

Far-left The Nation editor Katrina Vanden Heuvel was still exhibiting signs of Bush Derangement Syndrome on Sunday's Reliable Sources as she appeared on the CNN show to discuss Donald Trump's claims of seeing thousands of Muslims in New Jersey cheering on the 9/11 attacks. Vanden Heuvel not only used the controversy to rehash the war in Iraq as she complained that the media before the Iraq War…

It was one of those stunning live-TV moments revealing the seamier side of TV news.  Pat Brown is a criminal profiler who has taken a principled stand on media appearances about mass murderers. She will not discuss individual criminals, their motives, etc., believing that to do so only increases the number of mass murders.  But when Brown appeared on CNN's New Day this morning, co-host Christi…

The truth about this year's Thanksgiving and Black Friday store and online sales is out there. It's just that Christopher Rugaber at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, wasn't interested in clearly revealing all of it. Instead, the AP economics writer told readers about the dollar amount of this year's and last year's Thursday and Friday store sales, but failed to quantify the…

On Wednesday, the Associated Press's Josh Boak added to the wire service's collection of weak "Getaway Day" business journalism by declaring that new-home sales "recovered in October." No they didn't. The seasonally adjusted annual rate of 495,000 units reported by the Census Bureau was the fourth-lowest monthly level seen this year, even well below the 521,000 and 545,000 reported in the…

When last month Ben Carson suggested that people confronted by a shooter should rush him en masse, ABC ran a story criticizing him, claiming that Carson "appears to be second-guessing" the victims of the mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon. But on ABC's Good Morning America today, in the wake of the mass shooting in Colorado Springs, guess what an expert suggested? "If you can…

In the race for next year’s Republican presidential nomination, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz have made media bias an issue, as did Newt Gingrich during the 2012 contest. Irony alert: Martin Longman believes that it was one of the media’s favorite GOPers, John McCain, who planted the seeds for such press-bashing when he chose his  running mate. Longman contended in a Wednesday post that “something…

Ever since the White House changed hands almost seven years ago, press reports on the U.S. economy have annoyingly overaccentuated whatever positives reporters might find (or think they have found), while ignoring glaring negatives and omitting key items. One example of such biased reporting came from the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger on Wednesday. In covering the Census Bureau's October…

Joining host Chris Hayes on Wednesday’s pre-Thanksgiving edition of MSNBC’s All In, MSNBC political analyst and former Democratic Vermont Governor Howard Dean tried to trash the Republican Party as nothing but “an authoritarian party” “for a very long time” due to their policy positions on voter I.D. and abortion to name a few.

Economic news on Wednesday's pre-Thanksgiving "Getaway Day" was largely dismal. The government's report on October's personal income and outlays headed up the disappointing news. While incomes increased nicely — at a rate which needs to be repeated about two dozen more times before it can be seen as genuinely impressive — spending only rose by 0.1 percent, while prior months were revised…

Promoting his latest book Wednesday night on Newsmax TV, longtime sports writer and Washington Post columnist John Feinstein surprisingly went off the liberal reservation and told host Steve Malzberg that ESPN Radio 980 personality and Pardon the Interruption co-host Tony Kornheiser “should probably have gotten” suspended for comparing conservative Republicans to ISIS back.