Media Bias Debate

On Tuesday, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul became the second Republican to officially enter the 2016 presidential race, following Senator Ted Cruz’s announcement on March 23. However, on the morning of their respective presidential announcements, the “Big Three” (ABC, CBS, and NBC) networks went out of their way to label Cruz a “conservative” 13 times, compared to zero conservative labels for Senator…

Earlier this evening, the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism issued its report on Rolling Stone Magazine's November "A Rape on Campus" story. The report follows up on the magazine's request of Columbia to conduct an independent review of how the disastrously false 9,000-word story made it through to publication. USA Today is reporting that for all the harsh criticism the piece's…

UPDATE, April 6: An email sent by "Virginia Commonwealth University News" insists, despite the November 2014 tweet originally found at the link about Bryan's "GoFundMe" effort, that Alix Bryan "has not been employed by Virginia Commonwealth University." Accordingly, the text in this post's final sentence now refers to Bryan's claim in her WTVR bio and at her LinkedIn profile to have received a "…

Chickens came home to roost yesterday at the Associated Press. The AP, the economy's most consistent cheerleader when a Democrat is in office, has not only been ignoring and downplaying the significance of disappointing and negative reports for several months, pinning its claim that all is well on the streak of seasonally adjusted 200,000-plus job gains seen during the past 12 months. It has…

NBC became the first network to move on from the scandal involving Democratic Senator Robert Menendez (N.J.) on Thursday as NBC Nightly News made zero mention of the story and that entered a plea of not guilty in a Newark, New Jersey federal courtroom. As fellow networks ABC and CBS, ABC’s World News Tonight aired a one-minute-and-25-second segment on Menendez while the CBS Evening News devoted a…

Update, April 3: The Indiana man who claims to have been hacked now admits that he wasn't, but says he was "joking" about robbing Memories Pizza, and is threatening to sue those who exposed his (ahem) public comments.  Those of us following the Memories Pizza story won't have trouble remembering it as the years go by, thanks only partially to the Walkerton, Indiana store's fairly unusual name…

A short unbylined Associated Press report at its national site on the situation at Memories Pizza in Walkerton, Indiana this afternoon made sure to mention that the pizzeria "won't cater gay weddings" (in the headline). It also misstated the owner's statement to a South Bend TV station, claiming, using its own words, that she "said the state's new religious objections law backs their right to…

Something hasn't seemed right about the Memories Pizza story from the get-go. Now I know why. In a Tuesday report, TV Station ABC 57 cited the Walkerton, Indiana business's Crystal O'Connor as saying that, in the station's words, they "don't agree with gay marriages and wouldn't cater them if asked to." In other words, they've never been asked to. The non-story which ignited a national firestorm…

In his remarks dedicating the Edward M. Kennedy Institute on Monday, President Obama imagined how a child would see the replica of the U.S. Senate there and imagine the dialogue as “elevated” and “purposeful.....before she’s old enough to be cynical.” He lamented that party lines or philosophies become “barriers to cooperation or respect.” On Wednesday, the Washington Free Beacon noted Fox…

While all three of the major broadcast networks covered the indictment of Democratic Senator Robert Menendez (N.J.) on Wednesday night, the CBS Evening News chose to largely downplay the news by spending just 22 seconds on the story and hailed Menendez as someone “who often seems to relish a fight.” Additionally, the “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC all made sure to mention that Menendez is a…

On Monday, as has been their habit going back at least to the Clinton administration, Investor's Business Daily's editorialists once again broke a story the establishment press likely could have reported years ago. IBD revealed that the Obama administration "was secretly negotiating the Taliban Five's release without (Bowe) Bergdahl." IBD reasonably believes that coming up with any reason to get…

"How in the world" was the Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act four times as newsworthy to the liberal media than the revelation that Hillary Clinton's wiped her email server and thus, "[made] it impossible for investigators to find out what was going on with the Benghazi scandal," Media Research Center founder Brent Bozell asked on his April 1 appearance on the Fox Business Network program…

On March 18, Associated Press Religion Writer Rachel Zoll covered the decision by the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) "recognizing gay marriage as Christian in the church constitution after decades of debate over same-sex relationships." A search at the AP's national site indicates that the wire service hasn't done a story on the U.S. congregation since then. This means that it has ignored a…

Is the Republican party a political organization or “a terrarium of retrograde fauna”? Both, suggests Esquire’s Pierce, and if too few of the American people understand that, it’s in large part a result of, in his words, “the worst episode of journalistic malpractice that I can recall.” What set Pierce off was a remark from a former Democratic congressional staffer, quoted in the newspaper The…