Media Bias Debate

As I demonstrated last week, MSNBC and CNN, the two also-rans in the cable news race, survive in large part because about half of their revenues are, once contracts are signed with cable and other providers, guaranteed for several years. This insulates them from much of the financial impact of declining viewership. MSNBC's far-leftism is particulary painful to watch — so painful that it's hard…

Japan just reported yet another awful retail sales result. Though it far exceeeded predictions of a 7.3 percent fall, the 9.7 percent March 2015 plunge compared to March 2014 doesn't reveal much, as March 2014 saw a splurge at the stores ahead of a steep sales tax increase which took effect on April 1. The really telling figure is the 1.9 percent seasonally adjusted dive compared to February.…

The headline is already gone from the Associated Press's national site, but it's still present elsewhere. In the context of events in Ferguson and elsewhere since August of last year, one could argue that it contains more truth than the wire service and the headline's accidental creators will ever admit.

At Instapundit, Elizabeth Price Foley caught a real doozy of a column in the Cincinnati area's only daily newspaper — if you insist on calling something which looks like it was cobbled together overnight at Fedex-Kinko's a "newspaper." If there was a daily prize for the largest quantity of subtle but arrogant condescension in an opinion column, Cincinnati native, Ohio State graduate, and current…

CNN's Wolf Blitzer brought liberal actress Jane Fonda and Obama administration flack Marie Harf as his guests to Saturday's White House Correspondents Dinner. Blitzer gushed over Fonda and Harf during a live interview with colleague Brianna Keilar: "It doesn't get any better than Jane Fonda....Can you believe that I'm here with Jane Fonda? And Marie Harf, acting spokeswoman for the U.S. State…

At a Sunday press conference, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake told reporters that she and the law enforcement in the city she runs have a de facto responsibility, in the name of "balance," to give "space" to "destroy" to "protesters" who have such a desire. This obviously newsworthy pull quote condoning property destruction is not present in coverage at the Associated Press's main…

The Associated Press is one of many national establishment press outlets which has from all appearances utterly ignored National Review's chronicling of police-state tactics used by law enforcement in a "John Doe" investigation targeting Republican Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin. Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm's fishing expedition, which began in 2012, has attempted but thus…

You can usually set your watch to it. First, you learn about a "progressive" or liberal darling who makes a controversial, over-the-top statement which would get him or her in serious trouble with the general public if widely known. About 24 hours later, you visit establishment press coverage of the event, especially at the Associated Press, and find not a hint that anything controversial…

At a March 4 press conference, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder grudgingly bowed to the truth relating to the events surrounding the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in August of last year: "Michael Brown’s death, though a tragedy, did not involve prosecutable conduct on the part of Officer (Darren) Wilson." In doing so, Holder effectively acknowledged the falsity of the claim,…

Today's Census Bureau report on durable goods orders was like a poorly made cake with delicious frosting: tasty at first, but awful when fully experienced. The frosting in today's report was that overall orders increased in March by a seasonally adjusted 4.0 percent. The trouble is that an important, widely recognized element of that report — what the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger vaguely…

For liberals, the great mystery of the last few decades is how Republicans usually have won enough votes to control one or both houses of Congress even as the party moves increasingly to the right. As political-science profs Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson put it in their 5,500-word article in the spring issue of The American Prospect, “In a 50-50 nation, Republicans have learned how to have their…

Rush Limbaugh posted an interesting pair of questions at his web site yesterday: "How can CNN still be on the air with no audience? How can MSNBC have been on the air with no audience? In the old days, they're gone, kaput. Something else is tried. But they stay. And they double down on what they're doing that's losing audience." A large part of the answer, as I noted on March 30, is that those…

The Census Bureau reported today that sales new homes in the U.S. (seasonally adjusted at an annual rate) plunged sharply in March to 481,000 after hitting a seven-year record level of 543,000 in February. As has been the case so often, AP reporter Josh Boak didn't look past the seasonally adjusted numbers, and as a result gave the "expert" he quoted a free pass to supply sunnyside-up commentary…

On Thursday night, CBS and Spanish-language networks MundoFox, Telemundo, and Univision continued their silence on the latest controversy involving the Clinton Foundation and claims made in the upcoming book Clinton Cash about donations to the group while a Russian company purchased an American-owned uranium mine. Meanwhile, NBC ended its blackout on the story with a full report on NBC Nightly…