Media Bias Debate

Arthur Chu, best known as one of the all-time biggest money-winners on Jeopardy!, is also a writer who frequently contributes to Salon. In a Thursday article, Chu saluted departing Daily Show host Jon Stewart for, among other things, keeping him sane during his college days. Unfortunately, recalled Chu, back then America as a whole had lost its mind. Meanwhile, in the August issue of Vanity Fair…

On Thursday, Curtis Houck at NewsBusters noted how the Big Three networks and the two leading Spanish-language networks ignored the latest developments in the now 813 day-old IRS targeting scandal. As usual, only Fox News covered a congressional hearing on, in Fox's words, "the lack of accountability following the IRS targeting of tea party and other groups" as well as a federal judge's threat "…

These economics reporters at the Associated Press have become experts at deadpan humor. Earlier today, I noted how the wire service's Christopher Rugaber told readers, in the wake of a government report showing the lowest wage and benefit increases on record, that "the job market is not yet back to full health." No kidding, Chris. On top of that, the AP's Martin Crutsinger reacted to yesterday's…

CNN’s New Day co-anchor Alisyn Camerota toted the line of Planned Parenthood on Friday morning concerning their baby parts scandal in a interview with video maker David Daleiden of the Center for Medical Progress in which the former Fox News host parroted Planned Parenthood’s denial of any wrongdoing and promoted the so-called benefits of medical research using “fetal tissue.”

David Roberts has penned a tale of two media, dealing first with how a profusion of conservative outlets has pulled the Republican party to the right -- the subject of a recent Harvard study -- then pivoting to analyze the mainstream media’s belated (and still incomplete) awakening to the GOP’s “radicalism.” “One of the longstanding critiques of mainstream media on the left,” wrote Roberts in a…

In a recent piece for Slate, Mark Joseph Stern argued that videos released showing Planned Parenthood to be trafficking fetal body parts gives him hope. Is it the possible defunding of the ‘reproductive health’ organization that gives him hope, you might ask? Nope. Stern opined: “The graphic images of aborted fetuses are meant to disgust me, to convince me that abortion is a barbaric act of…

Christopher Rugaber at the Associated Press and the "expert" he quoted in his writeup on the government's awful Employment Cost Index report seemed to be taking their cues from Steven Wright's deadpan comedy act. The problem, of course, is that they were writing and saying isn't funny at all. Rugaber, with his "expert" help, assembled an impressive array of understatements and misstatements in…

Continuing the effort on the now-cancelled MSNBC’s Now to defend Planned Parenthood from its video scandal, National Organization for Women President Terry O’Neill joined host Alex Wagner on Thursday to gush over how the “beloved” provider of abortions and alleged seller of body parts from aborted babies “has nothing to apologize for” and mocked female GOP senators who want to defund the taxpayer…

Joe Scarborough chose to couch his criticism in exculpatory explanation, claiming that reporters "try to be as fair as possible" and that their bias is "unintended."  But Scarborough's bottom line was still this: that media bias is at its worst when it comes to the issue of abortion. Speaking on today's Morning Joe, Scarborough took his critique a significant step further, asserting that if a…

For the second time in a week, Fox News Channel (FNC) host Bill O’Reilly turned to statistics from the “very accurate” Media Research Center to form the basis of a segment of The O’Reilly Factor concerning the major broadcast network coverage of the Planned Parenthood scandal with Thursday’s mention comparing it with the droves of coverage given to the shooting death of Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe…

Ohio's newspapers have reported that two state legislators, one Democrat and one Republican, are cosponsoring a bill to defund Planned Parenthood in the Buckeye State. But they have mostly failed to note the key points made by Cleveland Democrat Bill Patmon in his inspiring, passionate speech at an Ohio Right to Life rally announcing his cosponsorship. You see, Mr. Patmon is black, and he has…

After almost nine days of silence on the Planned Parenthood baby parts scandal, CBS and NBC ended their coverage blackout with full stories following the release of a fourth horrifying video from the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) while ABC and Spanish-language networks Telemundo and Univision ignored it. However, the stories on the CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News were anything but…

According to The New York Times, Will Dana, the managing editor who oversaw Rolling Stone’s trumped up UVA gang rape story, is leaving the magazine.

The bar-lowering in the business press continues. In the wake of today's disappointing news from the government on U.S. economic growth, an email from CNNMoney.com failed to properly describe reported second-quarter growth, and falsely characterized today's results as "solid":