Media Bias Debate

It's going to be a long year for those of us who review Associated Press reports Uncle Sam's finances for evidence of bias and ignorance. Sometimes it seems that it would be easier to highlight the rare examples of fairness and balance. Take the first sentence of Andrew Taylor's report on President Obama's 2012 budget (please; that goes for his report and the budget). It, in combination with…

For about ten minutes on MSNBC Monday, Harvard History professor Niall Ferguson offered a articulate, detailed, and biting indictment of President Obama's handling of the crisis Egypt – and those disagreeing on the usually Obamaphilic "Morning Joe" panel could offer little of substance in response. Co-host Mika Brzezinski began the segment reading Ferguson's latest column – which is the…

Update (12:08 p.m. EST): Brewer just made this her question of the day on her MSNBC Live program. MSNBC's Contessa Brewer injected a bit of liberal commentary to a link she posted Monday morning on her Facebook page. "You know it's overfunded when even the Pentagon pushes for spending cuts. Why is defense such a sacred cow?" lamented Brewer in a comment posted above a link to a Wall Street…

“Gray Lady Down – What The Decline And Fall Of The New York Times Means For America” by William McGowan (from Encounter Books), is a carefully researched and devastatingly convincing critique of the New York Times losing its commitment to objective reporting. It opens with the 2006 funeral of the paper’s famed Executive Editor Abe Rosenthal, who retired in 1986. Though bad tempered and with…

Muammar Gaddafi has resorted to the oldest trick in the Arab-dictator book: distract attention from authoritarian rule at home by beating the Palestinian drum.  Nothing new there.  But what is noteworthy is how Reuters seems happy to march to the Libyan strongman's beat. Reuters' article "Gaddafi tells Palestinians: revolt against Israel" [h/t Drudge], fails to note the irony of an iron-…

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) isn't alone in having trouble understanding how the government is organized.  In a Sunday article posted on the Chicago Sun-Times's Web site, staff reporter Mary Houlihan credits the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) with running the House Committee on Un-American Activities.  That would have been quite an accomplishment, given the fact McCarthy never served in the…

On Thursday (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), I noted that Us Weekly's web site briefly posted a satirical item as legitimate news. The satire item was about Sarah Palin criticizing Christine Aguilera's infamous National Anthem botch at last week's Super Bowl on Sean Hannity's Monday radio show. Palin didn't even appear on Hannity's show on Monday. Once caught by gossipcop.com, Us Weekly pulled…

Tuesday's "Morning Joe" featured guest Daisy Khan, wife of Imam Rauf who tried to establish a mosque two blocks away from the site of the 9/11 terror attacks. The panel praised Khan and her husband as peace-making moderates, and arrogantly questioned why more Americans couldn't accept the mosque at Ground Zero. "America is the beacon of the world," co-host Mika Brzezinski said echoing…

Today marks the opening of the 38th annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Regardless of where you may stand on internal debates about some of this year's co-sponsors, there's no denying that for nearly four decades its been an enduring legacy of conservative political activism. But to liberal journalists like Time's Adam Sorensen, CPAC is casually dismissed as a "three-day…

B-Us-ted. GossipCop.com reports that Us Weekly just did something extraordinarily dumb (bolds, italics, and link are in original): Whoops! Us Weekly Publishes Sarah Palin/Christina Aguilera Spoof as Fact

In an interview with AlterNet's Don Hazen on Tuesday, MSNBC host Cenk Uygur slammed Fox News and bragged how he would take them on in the ratings: "For so long, they have controlled the national conversation....I want to drain them of that power. I want to put them back in the cave they came from....I also plan to beat them in the ratings and make them fear me." Uygur, who also hosts the…

What would be worse: if Norah actually believes it--or if she doesn't? Norah O'Donnell has claimed that the Washington Post and the New York Times provide straight-up information, without bias, of the sort that would be appealing to members of the putatively non-partisan "No Labels" group. Norah's mind-boggling assertion came on today's Morning Joe during a discussion of AOL's acquisition…

UPDATE: The full text of the referenced Dallas Morning News item, courtesy of Rich Noyes at the Media Research Center, is here (posted for fair use and discussion purposes). While looking for something else, I accidentally stumbled across a 2007 item in my blog's archives that makes the current soft media treatment of the Muslim Brotherhood even more outrageous than it already appears. In…

On the eve of the late Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday, the panel at Fox News Channel's "Fox News Watch" discussed the bias the mainstream media exhibited against the 40th president during and after his term in office. Panelist Jim Pinkerton even made a passing reference to the Media Research Center's special report on the media's anti-Reagan bias, "Rewriting Reagan." "I didn't need to look…