Media Bias Debate

The Associated Press's unbylined coverage of the Census Bureau's April retail sales report — sales rose 0.1 percent, falling far short of consensus expectations of 0.4 percent, a result Reuters predictably called "unexpected" — slipped in a sentence that had me rubbing my eyes. In early May, after the government announced that first-quarter gross domestic product growth came in at a barely…

File this under "Epic Fails: Layers of Editors." National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru submitted a requested column to the Washington Post’s Outlook section. After several rounds of mutually agreed-upon edits, the geniuses at WaPo made a final change without consulting Ponnuru. That change inserted erroneous information into what had been an otherwise clean column. The Post then published two…

Tonight, the Associated Press treated a story about a suit to overturn tiny-population Alaska's ban on same-sex "marriage" as national news — even giving it a"Big Story" promotion. Meanwhile, it kept Planned Parenthood's decision to abandon its legal effort to obtain state funding in more-populated Kansas out of its national site, thus treating it as a local story. Same-sex "marriage" and…

Early this morning, award-winning author and bioethicist Wesley Smith posted at National Review on a Sunday Medical Futility blog entry. That entry previewed a presentation scheduled to occur on morning of Sunday, May 18, the third day of the American Thoracic Society International Conference in San Diego. The topic: "Unilateral Do-Not-Attempt Resuscitation Orders In A Large Academic Hospital…

The Associated Press's unbylined 2:25 p.m. report on the government's April Monthly Treasury Statement contained an unhealthy dose of the historical revisionism we've come to expect from the outfit which really should be called in the Administration's Press. AP's tallest tale is in ascribing the four annual deficits of over $1 trillion incurred from fiscal 2009 through 2012 entirely to the "…

CBS News has come under fire for a supposed conflict of interest between its president David Rhodes and his Brother Ben Rhodes, President Obama’s Deputy National Security Advisor and CNN’s Reliable Sources did its best to dismiss the issue. Appearing on Sunday, May 11, CNN host Brian Stelter argued that “CBS has at times been so aggressive covering Benghazi that I've had sources describe it…

In what many may see as a "pigs fly" moment, actor Richard Dreyfuss, long known for his involvement in leftist causes up to and including efforts to impeach George W. Bush, appeared on Mike Huckabee's weekend Fox News program to promote the importance of U.S. citizens knowing "our constitution or our history." He went further, noting that "the constitution is the most single greatest step…

The estimated cost of the initial segment of California's bullet train, Golden State Governor Jerry Brown's pet project, has (excuse the pun) just shot up from $6.19 billion to $7.13 billion. If this is the only overrun encountered in this opening phase, which would be atypical, and if the California High Speed Rail Authority has similar experiences during the remainder of the project, assuming…

While I was aware that a fever-swamp Democrat in Wisconsin was planning to pass out Ku Klux Klan hoods at some kind of Wisconsin Republican gathering, I had no idea until this morning that the Associated Press actually considered it a national story back on May 1. It was really even more than a national story at the self-described "essential global news network." It was so vital that the nation…

On Friday, Glenn Kessler at the Washington Post (HT Hot Air) gave "Four Pinocchios" (i.e., a "Whopper") to a statement President Barack Obama made about Senate Republicans' filibuster track record on Wednesday in a speech at a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee dinner in Los Angeles. In the process, Kessler essentially delivered a rebuke to reporters who cover Obama. Every one of…

"The Washington Post is calling liberal Arkansas Democrat Mark Pryor a quote 'moderate.'  Well, to be fair, to the Washington Post, 'moderate' means that he opposes putting Republicans in jail for their views." Watch Jodi Miller zing the liberal media and liberal politicians in the latest edition of NewsBusted, embedded below the page break. Sign up for NewsBusted in your email here.…

One of the Indiana University professors who recently found that almost four times as many journalists self-identify as Democrats than as Republicans doesn't believe that that imbalance causes biased reporting. IU's Lars Willnat remarked to Salon magazine that "we don’t think that our findings reflect a ‘liberal media bias’...Journalists’ political preferences don’t usually translate into…

During an interview with Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Thursday's MSNBC Daily Rundown, NBC political director Chuck Todd challenged Reid's suggestion that Republicans were solely to blame for legislation not getting through Congress: "You don't believe Democrats play any role in this? It feels like a tit-for-tat game....you don't belief there's any tit-for-tat going on here…

"George W. Bush is a racist."  Those where the first words I heard about modern American politics when I came here to study back in 2000.  How did my friends know?  Well, he was the Republican candidate.  I wouldn’t want to be associated with someone like that, so I became a Democrat.  That scenario is not uncommon.  That is how a large number of Hispanics get their feet wet in American…