Name That Party: Local Media Largely Omit Democratic Affiliation of Cr
A Democratic member of the Washington, D.C. City Council announced his resignation yesterday after he decided to plea guilty to federal charges of embezzlement and filing false tax returns.
The news of Harry Thomas Junior's resignation made the front page of today's Washington Post, which promptly noted the disgraced councilman's Democratic Party affiliation. Thomas's party affiliation,…
AP Item on 'Summer Jobs Initiative' Omits That Most of 180,000 'Opport
An unbylined item appearing at the Associated Press shortly after midnight (captured in full as a graphic here due to its brevity; for fair use and discussion purposes) crowed about how President Barack Obama "is looking to boost summer job prospects for kids," has "gotten commitments for nearly 180,000 youth employment opportunities for next summer," and only says that "Many of the positions…
WashPost Hails Obama's 'Bold Act' in Making Recess Appointment While S
Washington Post scribes David Nakamura and Felicia Sonmez dutifully set out today to paint President Obama as the hero of the masses for his "bold act of political defiance" in naming "Richard Cordray as head a new consumer watchdog agency Wednesday, bypassing Republican opposition in the Senate that derailed his nomination last month."
Nakamura and Sonmez waited until the 10th paragraph in…
AP's Kravitz Ignored Available Data in Holding Out False Hope For Impr
A few readers asked me for my reaction to Derek Kravitz's December 23 report at the Associated Press on new-home sales. I thought that it was reasonably good, but felt that his leaving open in readers' minds the idea that this year's sales could conceivably top last year's was in bad form.
I was too kind. Based on data available elsewhere, Kravitz should have known (and maybe did) that…
Halperin: Santorum Might Have Media 'Rooting For Him
It's hard to imagine the media rooting, even "cheering" for a social conservative like Rick Santorum. But two certified MSMers claim that Santorum does have the potential to attract such unlikely support.
On today's Morning Joe, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, co-authors of the best-selling Game Change about the 2008 election, both opined that Santorum, given his appealing blue-collar…
Phooey on Fouhy: AP Reporter Needles GOP Candidates For Rarely Bringin
In 1984, an Associated Press writer covering the Democratic primaries wrote that "In a presidential contest dominated by concerns over the economy, inflation, and unemployment, the Democratic candidates have been loath to acknowledge the extent to which Carter administration policies contributed to those problems. Democrats have also controlled Congress for most of the past three decades, which…
Why Are Liberals Blind to Their Bias
I think it's very difficult for any of us to be objective about any subject, especially something we care deeply about, but my objective observation is that liberals tend to be less aware of and less willing to admit their biases.
We see this often, which I'll get to, but first, let me relate how this phenomenon most recently came to my attention.
Profile In Bias: CNN’s New Morning Host Possesses Liberal Legacy at
CNN’s Soledad O’Brien returned to the anchor desk Monday morning as the network reworked its morning anchor line-up for the second year in a row. In 2007, O'Brien was removed as the co-host of CNN’s ratings-challenged American Morning in an effort to jump-start the flagging program. Now she returns to host Starting Point, the second half of CNN’s morning coverage that airs from 7-9 a.m EST.…
CNN's Kosik: Occupy Outrage 'Has Encouraged Consumers to Band Together
On yesterday's CNN Saturday Morning News, business correspondent Alison Kosik reported on Verizon Wireless's reversal of a day-old plan to charge some customers a $2 bill-paying fee. Citing recent about-faces by Bank of America and Netflix, Kosik concluded:
Now, there's no direct connection here, but I can't help but believe that the outrage that we witnessed in the Occupy movement around…
AP Approves of Obama's 2012 Strategy of Virtually All Campaigning, All
On December 31, 2003, looking ahead to the upcoming 2004 election year, an Associated Press reporter -- I think it would have been Jennifer Loven at the time -- wrote about how George W. Bush was going to spend as much of the next 10-plus months as possible figuring that "he no longer needs Congress to promote his agenda." Therfore, he would use "aggressive campaign fundraising and use…
AP Wrongly Claims Palin's Figurative 'Death Panels' Contention 'Now Wi
There are quite a few problems with Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar's December 28 coverage ("New fee coming for medical effectiveness research") concerning a new fee (i.e., tax) which will imposed on health insurance companies for each person they cover starting tomorrow.
Several times (twice in the body and once as seen above in the headline), the story refers to the assessment as a "medical…
New Times Watch Quotes of Note: 2011 Worst Quotes of the Year
Times Watch’s end-of-year awards issue celebrates the best of the worst quotes that appeared in the paper or were uttered by Times reporters and columnists during 2011.
The New York Times spent much of the year in pro-Obama defense mode, excoriating the Tea Party and conservative opposition to Obama's agenda. Yet the paper found one movement it could embrace wholeheartedly – the leftist…
AP Writer Marvels at Omnipresence of Kim Jong Il Images, Never Notes C
Jean H. Lee's Friday afternoon report at the Associated Press on the omnipresence of images of the late Kim Jong Il throughout North Korea reads more like an audition to be the communist nation's next propaganda minister than a wire service report.
Not once does she call the late tyrant a tyrant, or for that matter even a Communist. If you didn't know any better, you would think you're…
AP's Pace Perpetuates Pathetic Claim That National Debt's Rise Is Due
There are press memes which won't go away no matter what, and no matter how often disproven. One, repeated in an Associated Press report a couple of weeks ago as our troops were about to leave Iraq, claimed that "No WMD were ever found" there. The truth: Yes they were — along with 550 metric tons of yellowcake uranium found in Iraq after Saddam was overthrown, specifically “the stuff that can…
