Media Bias Debate

Would someone please buy the Washington Post's Josh White a clue? He can't seem to get a handle on the "motive" for the actions of Yonathan Melaku (actually, I think White is pretending). Melaku has just pleaded guilty and will be sentenced to 25 years in jail. Authorities say he vandalized military grave markers, shot at the Pentagon and military museums, and was working on an improvised…

Today's report by Derek Kravitz at the Associated Press (also known to yours truly as the Administration's Press) covering the Census Bureau's December and full-year 2011 new-home sales release put a smiley-face on the "worst ever" year (the AP headline's term) in the category. I like the adjective used at Sweetness & Light's related blog post to describe Kravitz's crud: "unfazed." The AP…

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Yogi Bear lived in squalor in an urban park picking fights with the cops, urinating in public, and vexing local coffee shop owners and patrons. But Washington Post Metro columnist Robert McCartney today romanticized the average Occupy DC squatter as reminiscent of "one of [his] childhood heroes," Yogi Bear.

On the Chicago Tribune's Web site today, columnist Clarence Page writes of "The umbrage card trick."  Page lights into GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich for assorted misdeeds, one of which is calling Barack Obama a "food stamp president":

On Monday I noted how Washington Post staff writer Greg Miller failed to report that alleged top-secret information leaker John Kiriakou was employed from 2009 to 2011 as an investigator on the Foreign Relations Committee for Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.). Today in a follow-up story about Kiriakou's wife Heather resigning her CIA analyst post, Miller once again failed to mention Kiriakou's…

I guess what follows shouldn't be a total surprise, given that the Obama administration was perfectly comfortable ruining hundreds of thousands of perfectly good cars during the Cash For Clunkers program in 2009. The video which follows from CBS News in San Francisco last Thursday (full transcript here) tells viewers what is happening to valuable parts at the main manufacturing plant of the…

American Public Media (formerly American Public Radio) says that its "Marketplace" program "focuses on the latest business news both nationally and internationally, the global economy, and wider events linked to the financial markets." Okay. One would expect, given the track record of leftist and communist movements and causes in ruining economies and creating unspeakable human misery, that…

The day after the March for Life, a one-sided article from Reuters touted the safety of abortion, claiming that getting an abortion was much safer for women than giving birth. But Reuters failed to include vital information about the study and the people it quoted - namely, that the authors of the study and both of the experts it cited were either abortion doctors or had strong ties to the…

New York Times Public Editor Arthur Brisbane followed up in Sunday's edition on his controversial January 12 blog post, “Should The Times Be a Truth Vigilante?,” in which he asked readers if the paper should be more direct in challenging the statements of politicians in its straight news reporting. As Times Watch reported, the paper already does this, albeit almost solely to Republicans. At…

A frequent emailer saw a silver lining in Rand Paul's detention this morning in Nashville by the Transportation Safety Administration which prevented him from speaking at today's March For Life rally in Washington: "Best way to get the MSM to mention pro-life rally." Well, that's largely true. The local Nashville TV station video posted at Real Clear Politics mentions Paul's prolife purpose…

"Virginia Republicans push slew of conservative bills," shrieks the WashingtonPost.com headline for staff writer Laura Vozzella's January 23 article. Print edition editors opted for the decidedly more neutral-toned headline, "Virginia GOP pushes ambitious agenda," for the January 23 Metro section front-page article. Vozzella kicked off her article by painting the GOP state legislators are…

Former CIA agent John Kiriakou has been charged today with "repeatedly leaking classified information to journalists as well as violating the federal law that forbids disclosing the identity of covert intelligence officers," NBC News's Michael Isikoff reported earlier today. Isikoff noted in the second paragraph of his report that Kiriakou "between 2009 and last year worked as an investigator…

On their weekend evening news shows, the three major networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) all ignored a Friday mandate from the Obama administration forcing non-profit religious employers to provide for contraception in their health insurance for employees. Critics had condemned the rule as a violation of religious liberty. However, NBC had made sure to report that Congress was mulling defunding of…

Two examples of poor press handling of what initially appeared to be fairly good news about initial unemployment claims last Thursday got lost in the pre-South Carolina primary hubbub. The first and most obvious was in the writeup presented by the Associated Press's Chris Rugaber. In his fourth paragraph, he raised the threshold below which a consistent level of weekly claims might be…