Media Bias Debate

This post follows up on Noel Sheppard's item this morning on the progress of ObamaCare enrollment in Iowa, wherein we learn that there have been a "Hardy Handful" of five sign-ups thus far, with no identified press coverage outside of the Hawkeye State. A search on "Iowa insurance" (not in quotes) at the national web site of the Associated Press done at 1:30 p.m. returned nothing recent. AP…

The big talk in conservative radio on Thursday is Barack Obama’s 37 percent approval rating in the latest AP poll. Hosts are also making fun of how AP announced this number: buried in paragraph eight of a story headlined “Poll: No Heroes In Shutdown, GOP Gets Most Blame.” Guess what? Brent Baker reported when an AP poll found President Bush's approval rating hit a new low of 37 percent on…

Andrew Couts at Digital Trends is apparently the one who has broken the story (link is in original) that "The exact cost to build Healthcare.gov, according to U.S. government records, appears to have been $634,320,919, which we paid to a company you probably never heard of: CGI Federal." Without getting into minutiae, some of that amount may not be directly related to HealthCare.gov, but…

On Tuesday's Crossfire (HT commenter Gary Hall), liberal Democratic guest Bill Burton tried to impress the show's hostesses and guest David Limbaugh when he said of President Obama: "More people have jobs than they did when he took office." Wow. That's about the most unimpressive statement I've heard in years, and it would be beyond pathetic but for the performance of one state. Let's look at…

Many mainstream media pundits are undoubtedly displeased that a good portion of the public doesn’t approve of President Barack Obama’s job performance.  But today’s nomination of Janet Yellen for Federal Reserve chairman gave some of them a chance to wax nostalgic for another Democratic president and the time Yellen worked in the Clinton White House.  On today’s 3:30 pm segment of CNN Newsroom…

[UPDATED BELOW] CNN aired an exclusive interview with a Fast and Furious whistleblower on Monday morning, but NBC, CBS, and ABC all ignored the story and failed to interview the whistleblower, ATF agent John Dodson. The government is blocking publication of Dodson's new book, his insider account of the failed gun sting Operation Fast and Furious. In addition, CNN dropped its own interview…

Jessica Yellin is leaving CNN after six years at the network. Yellin was CNN's White House correspondent for two years before moving to chief domestic affairs correspondent.      Yellin's history of liberal student activism at Harvard certainly seeped through in her CNN reporting as she gushed over "candidate of hope" Obama while whacking Mitt Romney for sounding out of touch with women.…

While a great deal of attention has deservedly been given to Kathleen Sebelius's refusal to directly answer comedian Jon Stewart's question about why Obamacare's individual mandate was not been deferred until 2015 like the employer mandate was, at least one of her other comments about the wonders of the government-controlled "marketplace" has been ignored, and shouldn't be. Her supposedly…

In case you haven’t noticed, the government shutdown is all the GOP’s fault.  Today’s Chicago Tribune wanted to make sure readers knew that with a front-page headline titled “Hard-right bloc sticks to its guns: Shutdown stalemate continues as lawmakers in safe seats hold sway.” The article reports that some House Republicans “have chosen to defy Washington’s traditional norms of conversation and…

Poor Carl Bernstein: he's suffering a bad bout of MSM nostalgia. He longs for the good old media days when the news was dominated by the likes of the New York Times, the Washington Post and the then three broadcast networks. They could slam Republicans with impunity, without any conservative media counterweight. In covering the shutdown, today's media culture, kvetches Carl, is just too darn…

Evidence of testiness on the Democratic side of the 17% government shutdown continues to accumulate. Today, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney had a tense exchange with ABC's Jonathan Karl, who was apparently so taken aback by Carney's answer to another reporter that he interjected himself into the dialog — to correct Carney about what House Speaker John Boehner said earlier today about his…

Earlier today, Matt Hadro at NewsBusters noted how CNN's reporting on the government's 17% shutdown has been incredibly one-sided ("CNN Keeps Pounding GOP: 'Holding the American People Hostage,' Wanting to 'Destroy' Government"). It's as if they're on a different continent. Perhaps that's partially explains why the cable network somehow placed Hong Kong in Brazil earlier today (graphic is at…

In a story published early this morning by Manu Raju at the Politico which is primarily about Senate Majority Harry Reid's plans to aggressively pursue reelection in 2016, the Nevada senator took shots at the establishment press for "trying so hard to be fair that you are unfair." Proving Reid wrong in real time, Raju failed to mention Reid's response last week to a question by Dana Bash at CNN…

In the midst of a federal government shutdown wherein he's refusing to negotiate with congressional Republicans, President Barack Obama had time to hold forth with his thoughts on the name of the Washington Redskins, telling the Associated Press on Saturday that he would "think about changing" the name were he owner of the NFL franchise. Of course, the Big Three networks and major newspapers…