Media Bias Debate

The Conference Board's July Consumer Confidence report released earlier today threw a heavy dose of cold water on the idea that the economy might finally achieve a broad-based, genuine recovery this year. Despite month after month of "all is well" reporting — and excuse-making when all hasn't been well — from the U.S. business press, the American public has apparently finally figured out that…

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank is obsessed with tearing Wisconsin Governor and 2016 GOP presidential candidate Scott Walker down, and is clearly not above distorting the facts to make his pathetic points. Milbank's latest tirade is about how Walker is allegedly "so dangerous" because he doesn't like unions. That's based on quite a bit of direct experience, which has included death threats…

Politico’s Darren Samuelsohn reports that throughout Obama’s presidency, liberal comedian Jon Stewart was “summoned” to the White House for “secret...visits” with the president, an example of how the administration took “unusual steps to cultivate Daily Show comic.” Samuelsohn tries to soften Stewart’s far-left politics as merely being “center-left” mixed with a “populist streak heavy on fiscal…

On Monday’s Last Word, Lawrence O’Donnell started his program with a panel discussing Mike Huckabee’s controversial comments about the Iran deal. Daily Beast columnist and MSNBC contributor Jonathan Alter had harsh words for the Republicans, claiming their rhetoric is far worse when compared to the Democrats: “[T]here's a vileness gap that is developing between our political parties.” The ex-…

I guess the slogan of labor has changed from "Look for the union label" to "Look for the union waiver." The Los Angeles Times published a long front-page story early this morning on an issue some people thought disappeared after its initial exposure two months ago. The issue is whether union workers should be exempt from minimum wage laws, especially the sky-high minimums being enacted in some U…

The “big three” networks of ABC, CBS and NBC gleefully promoted on Monday evening President Obama’s “scolding” of 2016 Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee over his criticism of the Iran deal and his “scathing words” for the GOP field as candidates “are trying to out-trump [Donald] Trump.” Not surprisingly, the networks also sided with then-candidate Obama on May 15, 2008 when the same…

Based on how they handled it today, it's pretty obvious that the Associated Press's Ken Sweet and his wire service's headline writers want the lowest possible number of users of their reporting — consumers and subscribing print and broadcast outlets — to know about the mainland Chinese stock market's historically deep 8.5 percent Monday dive. It took four paragraphs for Sweet to get to the…

A Monday New York Times editorial compared transgender access to restrooms to the civil rights-era struggles against Jim Crow laws as well as women’s rights and Americans with disabilities. The Times argued that banning transgender students from bathrooms that do not align with their sex at birth “reinforce[s] cruel policies that deny dignity to some of the most vulnerable students and subject…

2016 GOP presidential candidate and former Texas Governor Rick Perry is fighting a legal battle against an out-of-control Lone Star State county. That county's prosecutor has sued Perry, claiming that a) he committed an illegal act of "coercion" by threatening to veto legislation funding a "public integrity" office headed by Travis County's Rosemary Lehmberg, who was convicted of drunk driving in…

Appearing on Fox News’ Media Buzz, David Zurawik, television and media critic for the Baltimore Sun, hammered President Obama over his relationship with the press and accused him of having “one of the most hostile press administrations in the world.” He asserted: "We have an administration that is as hostile as Richard Nixon's and we've tried to push back and it's guys like Jon Stewart who let…

Veteran journalist John Harwood, according to his Twitter home page, covers "Washington and national politics for CNBC and the New York Times." Saturday morning, despite all of his experience, Harwood tweeted a question (HT Twitchy) so naive that a freshman journalism student would have been embarrassed to ask it:

In a speech at a Republican Lincoln Day dinner in West Virginia earlier this week, Murray Energy Corp. founder and CEO Robert Murray decried the Obama administration's determination to, as described at the financial news site SNL.com (to be clear, no relation to Saturday Night Live), "bypass the states and their utility commissions, the U.S. Congress and the Constitution in favor of putting the U…

I'm virtually certain that he wouldn't dream of it, but the Associated Press's Josh Lederman seriously needs to consider correcting two extremely embarrassing paragraphs he wrote in his coverage of President Obama's appearance on Jon Stewart's Daily Show earlier this week. At the 15:03 mark of the Comedy Central video following the jump, Obama treated Stewart as if he's a legitimate journalist,…

The press — especially the Associated Press — wants everyone to know that the email controversy "swirling" around her is partisan and distracting. Why anyone would worry about its national security or legal implications is almost completely lost on them. That's their story, and they've been sticking to it for months. The latest installment from the AP came tonight from Lisa Lerner, Eric Tucker…