Media Bias Debate

On Wednesday evening in Europe (12:31 p.m. Eastern Time), in what it was already describing as "the world's deadliest known outbreak of E. coli," the Associated Press reported that "No cause for the outbreak has yet been found," while farmers on the continent were petitioning the EU for hundreds of million of dollars in compensation. By midday European time (6:27 a.m. ET) on Friday, June 10,…

"I've never seen the news media do this, and it is beyond reproachful for them to have done this," NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell complained on the June 10 "Fox & Friends" regarding the New York Times and Washington Post calling for readers to volunteer to help them comb through the archive of Sarah Palin's official gubernatorial e-mail correspondence. For the full segment, click the…

There must be something in Chicagoland's drinking water which causes either acute memory loss or a persistent inability to pay attention. First, we had presidential candidate Barack Obama, who sat in Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ for nearly two decades, but who supposedly had no idea Pastor Wright was so hostile towards America ("US KKK of A"), its history (we deserved the…

Whether it's deliberate obfuscation or just plain laziness is up for debate, but the media have a penchant for misleading news consumers with the meme that Blue Dog Democrats are politically "conservative." While the Blue Dog caucus is decidedly more moderate than Democrats as a whole -- you could individual members are "conservative for a Democrat" -- they rarely if ever qualify as…

Statism never sleeps. The Obama administration has apparently identified a significant constituency it hasn't been able to buy off, and is attempting to do something about it. Of course, the ever-gullible Darlene Superville at the Associated Press is swallowing the White House line completely, as seen in these excerpted paragraphs: Obama to create White House Rural Council  …

Ominous speculation from Women’s Wear Daily (which has robust media reporting) about the management style of Jill Abramson, the New York Times’s executive editor in waiting -- she reminds one anonymous senior editor of the notorious Howell Raines! Abramson also told an interviewer for The Guardian she was most proud of providing a "sceptical take on the motivations of" Ken Starr, the…

Early Tuesday morning, David Shepardson and Christina Rogers at the Detroit News ("GM's Akerson pushing for higher gas taxes") reported that General/Multi-Government Motors CEO Dan Akerson "wants the federal gas tax boosted as much as $1 a gallon to nudge consumers toward more fuel-efficient cars." Later in the interview, Akerson was much more emphatic about what he would like to see done…

Brent Bozell reminded readers of his column that the networks piled on 152 stories about Rep. Mark Foley in the story's first 12 days in the fall of 2006, but they weren’t the only ones with a vast left-wing disparity. Time and Newsweek each devoted cover stories and multiple pages to the Foley scandal. Time put an elephant’s rear end on the cover with the words “What a Mess...Why a tawdry…

¿Como se dice "useful idiot" en español? Try Courtland Milloy. The liberal Washington Post columnist today published an item reflecting on his time in Havana with "community activists" who "engage[d] in frank talk about Cuba's social inequities."

Wednesday was Meredith Vieira's final day as co-host of NBC's Today. Since joining the broadcast in September 2006, she has brought staunch liberal advocacy to the morning news program, following the model of her predecessor, Katie Couric. News reader Ann Curry will take over as Matt Lauer's co-host, maintaining the broadcast's left-leaning perspective. The Media Research Center has compiled…

Dennis Cauchon at USA Today has been one of a very few establishment press reporters willing to expose federal workers' disproportionate pay and benefits (previous examples here and here) as well as Uncle Sam's precariously dangerous financial situation. Cauchon has two USAT items today on the latter topic (HT to NB commenter Gary Hall): "U.S. funding for future promises lags by trillions,"…

The liberal media's most recent effort to turn Sarah Palin into a dolt over her version of Paul Revere, on which historians are now defending her, has prompted me to share with you some confusing points of European history I have recently re-encountered in my lay study of the subject. With apologies in advance to professional and amateur historians, here are a few fun "facts."

This morning on CNN Newsroom, anchor Kyra Phillips examined another aspect of the Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-NY) story.  Noting that Weiner's wife is a very close friend of and former aide to Hillary Clinton, Phillips said:

On Friday, Cass Sunstein, the White House's 56 year-old Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (pictured at right), attempted to disavow a 42-page paper he wrote called "Lives, Life-Years, and Willingness to Pay," which recommended that the government reduce resources directed at benefitting the elderly in favor of increasing what goes to young people, because young…