Media Bias Debate

Railing against how Republicans want to "make it ethnic" when it comes to criticism of Islamist terrorism, Hardball host Chris Matthews this evening insisted that President Obama was correct to eschew referring to the Charlie Hebdo office massacre by al Qaeda operatives as "Islamic terrorism." What's more, Matthews made a point of insisting that he refuses to identify in solidarity with the…

On Fox News's "The Five" last week, the panel had some fun coming up with alternative songs and performers U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry could have employed in his visit to France last week. The video which follows starts with Greg Gutfeld exposing how the song used — "You've Got a Friend" as delivered by James Taylor, who was having a hard time even keeping his microphone properly…

Tuning into the middle of a Morning Joe segment today, at first I assumed that MSNBC's Ari Melber was chatting with the Oscar nominees.  But no, turns out Melber had scored interviews with President Obama's SOTU speechwriting team. You'll excuse my confusion. As you'll see, just like the Oscar hopefuls, the SOTU writers appear to be a panorama of people of pallor. 

Your truly noted yesterday (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog) how Michael Moore tweeted, in part, that "We were taught snipers were cowards." Earlier today, Geoffrey Dickens at NewsBusters observed that Seth Rogen, whose "The Interview" movie was at least partially salvaged financially by freedom-of-speech supporters on the left and right who watched it online and in person in select areas, tweeted…

The popularity of "American Sniper," the story of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, has "shocked" Hollywood. Estimates are that by the time the four-day Martin Luther King holiday weekend ends, the Clint Eastwood-directed film will gross over $100 million and smash records in several R-rated film categories. That such a movie has been so well received, causing long waiting lines in both red and blue America…

The nation's establishment press is virtually ignoring the existence of horrifying and officially approved Islamic State videos showing the executions of accused homosexuals and adulterers.  A search this morning at Google News on "Islamic State gay" (with "Islamic State" in quotes, showing duplicates) for items appearing since January 14 returned 83 results. Roughly 30 of them are directly…

Howard Kurtz, the Fox News analyst and the host of its "Media Buzz" program, made a few pertinent observations in a column about Victor Paul Alvarez's astonishingly crass attempt at humor at Boston.com earlier this week. That said, Kurtz should have criticized the web site and its parent, the Boston Globe, for its completely unsatisfactory explanation for the one "correction" it made to Alvarez's…

On Tuesday, I posted (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog) on a bogus "study" out of North Dakota University contending that "almost one in 3 college men would commit rape 'if nobody would ever know and there wouldn’t be any consequences.'" Media exposure from favorable and unfavorable outlets continues to grow. In that post, I noted that the study disqualified itself from credibility by uncriticially…

Following the lead of ABC and CBS from Thursday morning, NBC Nightly News cheered President Barack Obama’s newest initiative that would require private businesses “to guarantee” their employees “at least seven” paid sick days and affect 43 million Americans.  While senior White House correspondent Chris Jansing interviewed the owner of a Maryland carpet company opposed to the President’s…

At the Lafayette, Indiana Courier Journal, reporter Mikel Livingston, that paper's social policiy reporter, set out to try to pass the Food Stamp Challenge. The idea, in his words, was to "survive for one week on $29.69," because, he says, that is "what the average recipient of SNAP benefits, commonly called food stamps, receives each week in Indiana." By Day 6, he claimed, "faced with the…

At the conclusion of a story on Wednesday’s CBS Evening News on the drop in gas prices and how Americans feel about the economy, CBS News senior business correspondent Anthony Mason felt that it was important to inform viewers that President Obama’s approval rating has improved six points from October in the latest CBS News poll. “All this has also helped lift President Obama's job approval…

Victor Paul Alvarez's LinkedIn profile says that he's an "Associate Editor - Boston.com at The Boston Globe," with previous stints at East Bay Newspapers and the Baltimore Sun. He was a copy boy at the Sun in 1994 while he was also a student at Towson University, which would likely make him a bit over 40 years old now. It is beyond comprehension that someone with Alvarez's decades of experience…

The latest report out of Venezuela by the Associated Press's Hannah Dreier has a time stamp of 1:15 p.m. today. This means that the wire service has had plenty of time to report, and has chosen not to report, a powerful pastoral letter issued yesterday by that country's Catholic bishops (original in Spanish; full Google Translation) denouncing that country's descent into a system they described…

In the Tuesday print edition of The New York Times, an article appeared on A11 about the “anti-Islam” and “anti-immigration rally in Germany” that took place in Dresden on Monday and, in addition to trashing their position, reporter Melissa Eddy failed to interview or quote any of the over 20,000 demonstrators.  Over course of the 650 word plus article, Eddy instead included quotes from Germany’…