Media Bias Debate

You begin to get an idea of how poorly served the news-consuming public is by the Associated Press when you compare its "reporting" on Obama czar Elizabeth Warren's appearance tomorrow before the House Financial Services Committee to an information-packed editorial -- yes, an editorial -- in the Wall Street Journal this morning. You can read all of the over 750 words in the unbylined AP…

On CNN Newsroom this morning, anchor Carol Costello spoke with national correspondent Jason Carroll about the potential for a nuclear disaster in Japan.  Carroll noted that "some scientists say the best-case scenario at this point is that the situation in Japan ends up like Three Mile Island. . ."  This possibility  frightened the anchor: COSTELLO: It's kind of crazy to me that we're hoping…

You knew, based on his track record of biased and inaccurate reporting during the Badger state standoff that Scott Bauer's Thursday attempt to explain the state's situation and events occurring up to that point ("Key questions surrounding Wisconsin union fight") wouldn't exactly be fair and balanced. But it's Bauer's answer to one of his own crafted questions that revealed as much as anything…

Demonstrating the ability to go unhinged without provocation, movie critic Roger Ebert looked at this Hollywood Reporter item discussing CNN's audience increase on Friday as an excuse to tweet the following at about midnight Eastern time last night:

The damage control effort over at National Public Radio (NPR) is at such a state that they've consulted a piece from Glenn Beck's TheBlaze.com to argue it's the victim of a smear operation. On Sunday morning's "Weekend Edition," NPR delved into the report. When a sting operation launched by conservative James O'Keefe recorded a top NPR Foundation fundraiser making disparaging comments about…

New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller’s latest sniping at Fox News garnered some unsympathetic media attention. Keller told a New York college audience March 3 that "I think if you're a regular viewer of Fox News, you're among the most cynical people on planet Earth. I cannot think of a more cynical slogan than 'Fair and Balanced'.”   The Daily Beast media reporter Howard Kurtz…

Yesterday the Associated Press reported "Maryland gay marriage bill dies with no final vote."  The article begins: A bill to legalize gay marriage in Maryland fell short Friday after supporters failed to find enough votes to overcome Republican opposition and misgivings by some Democrats in the deeply Catholic state. Just in case any readers missed the point, seven paragraphs later: Some…

The Associated Press's Jim Kuhnhenn's did some really heavy lifting this morning, carrying bucket after bucket of water for the White House and Barack Obama. Wisconsin? Obama's letting his spokesman handle it while his national party "has played down its role." Death threats against Badger State GOP Senators? What death threats? But Kuhnhenn's keister-covering for the administration goes…

Yesterday, Washington Post syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer performed an act of journalism that anyone in the establishment press could have done -- and didn't -- for 17 days. Krauthammer did a masterful job of taking apart Obama White House Office of Management and Budget Director Jacob ("Jack") Lew's ridiculous February 21 defense of Social Security and its alleged irrelevance to…

On Friday in its 7 a.m. Eastern hour, MSNBC's "Morning Joe" headlined Thursday's congressional hearings on the radicalization of American Muslims – but only played clips of Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), a Muslim-American who represents only one side of the issue. The show then interviewed him for nine minutes, a lengthy interview for one person on the morning show. While Ellison received some…

Two men testified yesterday before a U.S. House of Representatives panel about how their loved ones were radicalized by Islamist extremists and how local mosque leaders did nothing to help alert U.S. authorities of the potential danger. Yet accounts of their testimony were buried in the Washington Post's front page March 11 story about the Homeland Security Committee's March 10 hearings…

This afternoon's report by the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger on the government's February Monthly Treasury Statement, which shows the highest single-month deficit in U.S. history, has more spin in it than the complete library of this group's songs. A complete rundown would take more space than readers could stand, so let's just concentrate on two paragraphs. Here's the first: The…

The instinct here is that an Associated Press "story" by Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin, will get lots of radio and TV time tomorrow. That would be a reasonable expectation, because what Bauer writes isn't really a "story" as much as it is a free political announcement. I'm predicting that the establishment press will love it, especially the opening paragraph: Wis. defeat could help…

MSNBC's "panel" on today's hearings about radicalization of Muslim-Americans featured liberals Carl Bernstein and Cenk Uygur – with MSNBC's Richard Lui moderating. With no substantial conservative counterpoints to be offered, the two guests sounded their condemnations of the hearings as "cultural warfare" and bigotry. Bernstein slammed the House inquiry as a joke and as a "debating…