Media Bias Debate

During the third quarter, Fox News, which has been routinely walloping its cable-news competition for years, was "the most-watched (network during) primetime across all of cable in more than a decade — even besting USA and ESPN." So says the Hollywood Reporter, which also gets the award for the most delicious (or is it really the most truthful?) typo of the day:

Steve Kroft's interview of Barack Obama was the focus of this past Sunday's episode of "60 Minutes" on CBS. It has become noteworthy primarily because of Obama's statement that U.S. intelligence agencies "underestimated what had been taking place in Syria." As several previous NewsBusters posts have shown (examples here, here, here, and here), the press is working mightily to minimize how the…

A number of center-right and New Media outlets have noted Politico Magazine's disingenuousness in the opening photograph in its "Race and the Modern GOP" article. At the item's top is the iconic "Stand in the Schoolhouse Door" photo showing onetime segregationist Alabama Governor George Wallace "try(ing) to block the entry of two black students" into the University of Alabama. The aforementioned…

ABC's Jonathan Karl is on a tear — and his editorial bosses at ABC seem determined to ignore him. As Scott Whitlock at NewsBusters noted earlier today, Karl on Friday "grilled White House press secretary Josh Earnest ... about claims that al Qaeda had been 'decimated,'" mainly because it hasn't been. Instead, it seems like there are at least ten times as many versions. The network televised none…

Early voting in Ohio was supposed to start tomorrow, a full 35 days before Election Day. But today, the U.S. Supreme Court, by a 5-4 majority allowed the state to carry out voting law as passed by the legislature instead of what a group of misnamed "civil rights" groups wanted. The final paragraph of Ann Sanner's Associated Press coverage of the ruling illustrated how absurd this controversy has…

In an interview with Ben Affleck on Monday's NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer observed that the actor's new murder mystery thriller Gone Girl was "a little hostile to the institution of the media." Affleck agreed but reassured Lauer: "Yeah, it's not media broadly. It's not you guys or The New York Times or even the news. It's about that stripe of media that's the sort of the cable, 24-hour, 'Who…

Last week, an Oklahoma man beheaded a former coworker after losing his job, but NBC, and its sister channel MSNBC, have ignored the role that his conversion to Islam may have played in the brutal murder. After NBC failed to acknowledge Alton Nolen’s Muslim faith during its sole report on Friday night, a Monday morning news brief on the murder by MSNBC’s Jose Diaz-Balart also ignored the murderer’…

Democratic State Representative Christina Ayala has been arrested and charged with 19 felony charges of voter fraud. Eight of the counts are for fraudulent voting. Other Ayala family members are under investigation, and criminal charges have been recommended but not made against one of them. The press is letting Connecticut's Secretary of State claim that the Ayala prosecution proves that the…

According to a poll which is described as the state's "gold standard," Republican U.S. Senate candidate Joni Ernst now leads Bruce Braley, her Democratic Party opponent, in the Iowa U.S. Senate race for the seat being vacated by Democrat Tom Harkin. The Des Moines Register's "Iowa poll" has Ernst up by a six-point margin, 44% - 38%. That Ernst's lead isn't larger is apparently attributable to a…

Jeff Bezos is a transcendent Internet entrepreneur.  He understands the way the Web works in a  way few others do.  He sees around the curve of the Earth just a little further than do most of us. To wit: Bezos started in 1994 Amazon.com.

As I noted Sunday evening, Fox News's Megyn Kelly, on her Friday show, characterized the beheading of Colleen Hufford at the hands of Alton Nolen, if true, as "the first American beheading on American soil reportedly in the name of jihad." It turns out that someone allegedly tried to beat Nolen out for that distinction, and failed. Take a look at what the Oklahoman's Nolan Clay described as a "…

National Journal’s Ron Fournier was apparently among those who endured President Obama's appearance on "60 Minutes" this evening. Fournier was able to succinctly summarize the contents of Obama's interview with Steve Kroft, the network's designated softball pitcher, in a tweet appearing shortly after its conclusion (HT Twitchy):

The story of alleged Moore, Oklahoma murderer Alton Nolen, who reportedly beheaded co-worker Colleen Hufford, is fading from the headlines. Barring further developments, I don't expect it to be a news topic on any of the Big Three networks' morning or evening news shows tomorrow. That's because it has already disappeared from prominence at the Associated Press. At 10:20 this morning, the latest…