Media Bias Debate

In an item which talks about a "secret retreat" planned by eight senators which is so "secret" that it's getting a two-page story, the Politico's John Bresnahan and Jake Sherman write that "If polls stay steady, (House Speaker John) Boehner will be at the helm of a House filled with Republicans disappointed that Obama will have another four years in the White House." Uh, last time I checked,…

The headline writers at the Daily Beast are either dumber than a box of rocks, or really, really don't like the content of Eli Lake's story today. The smart money should be on the latter. As of 5:20 p.m., Lake's story concerning previous attacks on Benghazi, numerous security warnings, and the State Department's refusal to beef up protection was Number 2 in the rotation on the Daily Beast's…

As even the casual reader of NewsBusters is well aware, the MSNBC cable news network is forever on the lookout for racially-tinged "code words" in Republican speeches and "dog whistle" ads by GOP super PACs against Democrats. But the network's keen sense of outrage is conspicuously absent when it comes to attacks by Democratic groups against Mia Love, the African-American Republican Mayor of…

Today marks three weeks to the day after the deadly terrorist strike on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and yet the scene of the crime remains "unguarded" and the FBI has yet to do an investigation on the ground there, much to the confusion and dismal of local residents of Benghazi, Washington Post staffers Anne Gearan and Michael Birnbaum reported in today's Washington Post. Yet the article,…

As of 2 PM ET, various searches at the national web site of the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press (on "furious"; on "Univision"), Reuters ("furious"; "fast and furious"; "univision"), and United Press International ("furious"; "Univision") indicate that the three wire services have given no coverage to reports from Univision exposing the wider geographic scope and far more fatal…

The Washington Post proved on Tuesday that it will promote “Occupy DC” protests as real “news events” no matter how poor the turnout. “About 50 protesters took to the streets waving signs, chanting and singing,” wrote the Post’s Annie Gowen. “They were trailed by a large cadre of D.C. police, in vans, on foot and on Segways, who obligingly shut down streets for them.” And the Post obligingly…

Although a CNNMoney survey had economists by a three-to-one margin saying a Mitt Romney presidency would be better for the economy than another term of President Obama, the report's title said they "reluctantly" chose Romney. "And many of those picking Romney were more critical of, as opposed to excited about, the Republican challenger's plans," the report read. Would CNNMoney have reported…

Ignoring other conservative condemnations of liberal media bias, CNN's Brooke Baldwin pulled tape of former President George H. W. Bush all the way from 1992 ranting about the press – and then snidely pointed out how it "did not help" him. "[C]omplaining about the media did not help Bush One. He lost his bid for re-election," noted Baldwin on Monday afternoon's Newsroom, who compared Paul…

In an irony of ironies, a CNN roundtable on media bias featured a liberal figure of the institutional media, Chrystia Freeland, claiming that Paul Ryan has gotten "pretty fabulous treatment" at the hands of the media. Her statement came on Sunday's Reliable Sources. "I think he's had pretty fabulous treatment in the press and maybe actually a lack of scrutiny of what he's actually saying,"…

In an essay published on page B1 of today’s New York Times, columnist David Carr seeks to contradict an open letter which MRC president Brent Bozell and other leading conservatives signed which calls out the media for their favoritism toward President Barack Obama. He appears to have a few problems making an intellectually coherent argument, however.

Let's see. Who has the bigger problem with Libya and the Middle East? Is it the guy who's in charge with a foreign policy in disarray who has described the first murder of a U.S. ambassador in 33 years a "bump in the road"? Or his presidential campaign challenger Mitt Romney? If we're to believe Mike Allen, Jim Vandehei, and Politico, it's Romney, where "Romney advisers at odds over Libya"…

For those who want the short answer to the question in this post's title, the answer is almost definitely "no." But in a New York Times op-ed piece in mid-September, former Obama "car czar" Steven Rattner effectively said that the so-called "fact-check" site known as PolitiFact should make amends to former Alaska Governor and vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. In December 2009,…

The Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, has been running a series of "Why It Matters" items in the run-up to the presidential election purporting to educate readers about important issues. Reporter Stephen Ohlemacher's contribution to the series concerning Social Security opens with a bald-faced fib, omits the fact that the system's benefit payments and costs have exceed payroll…

At the Associated Press on Saturday, Gosia Wosniacka did something one rarely sees any more in wire service coverage, actually blaming a government policy for an industry's financial problems -- in this case, state-imposed price controls on the California dairy industry. But price controls in the highly tarnished Golden State, while very relevant, have been around for decades. Ms. Wosniacka…