Media Bias Debate

As it turns out, mainstream media outlets that lauded President Barack Obama's State of the Union speech as "downright Reaganesque" might be on to something. While ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and MSNBC exalted the commander-in-chief, at least one observer charged the Democratic president with crafting a speech that was "tantamount to plagiarism." In a column on the U.S. News site, presidential…

"[F]or all the surface civility [of the State of the Union], Obama wants to pick a fight, or at least draw a stark contrast, between his jobs-centric philosophy and the GOP’s determination to cut government first and ask questions later." That's how Politico's Glenn Thrush and Carrie Budoff Brown described the main difference between the president and his Republican congressional opposition…

None of the broadcast news programs from Monday evening and Tuesday morning covered the 2011 "March for Life" in Washington, DC, a pro-life rally that reportedly drew at least tens of thousands of attendees. Neither NBC, ABC, nor CBS gave any coverage Monday to the march on their respective evening news programs; none of the networks covered the story Tuesday morning. The New York Times did…

On Sunday evening, an event in Washington preemptively made mincemeat of the usual press claims that "thousands" would participate in the next day's March for Life. The next day at the Washington Post, Michelle Boorstein and Ben Pershing followed form ("Thousands of abortion opponents rally in march on Mall"), but did make an interesting, seemingly reluctant observation: "Some attending the…

What's with the New York Times and its inability to practice what it preaches when it comes to avoiding gun-filled images and rhetoric?  A few days ago I noted how the Times had placed a bullet-riddled ad for a violent video game right on its online op-ed page. Now comes this Times headline: "Republicans’ Budget Man Draws Fire".  That is of course a metaphorical invocation of someone who by…

In a Monday Associated Press dispatch, reporter Tom Krisher virtually celebrated the idea that Government/General Motors "may be Number 1 again," with happy talk of "dethroning" and "overtaking" Toyota. Nowhere did Krisher mention the inconvenient fact that Toyota's revenues dwarf GM's to the point where comparing unit sales is an absurd waste of time. Specifically:

MSNBC abruptly ended the run of Keith Olbermann on Friday, bringing to a close an era in which the left-wing host compared conservatives to Nazis, accused them of "murderous deceit," of "urinating on the Constitution" and told President George W. Bush to "shut the Hell up!" Olbermann certainly became more vitriolic as the years went by, but back in 1998, he frothed about special prosecutor…

Last Wednesday I wrote about a left-wing anti-Wal-Mart group in Washington, D.C. that published a flyer depicting a crosshairs on the Wal-Mart smiley face icon and called for a "march on the developer's house" in Northwest D.C. after dark on Thursday the 20th. [That flyer has since been scrubbed from the WalMartFreeDC.org website, but you can see a screen capture of it below the page break…

In an Associated Press report by Patrick Walters yesterday afternoon, the following two reasons were offered as to why the Philadelphia abortion "clinic" operated by Dr. Kermit Gosnell, who was arrested and charged earlier this week "with murdering seven babies and one woman who went to him for an abortion," had not been inspected since 1993: Democratic former Governor Ed Rendell, who left…

Editor's Note: The initial post included an incorrect video embed. The correct video has now been inserted. We apologize for the error. While mainstream media outlets repeatedly fail to question flawed health care cost estimates, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell exposed the biased coverage on the January 21 "Fox & Friends." "This proves why they're not the mainstream media," asserted…

Trick? Or "tweak"? On Friday, a Reuters report at CNBC noted the Federal Reserve's journey into the accounting and reporting twilight zone earlier this month. In doing so, it conducted a clinic in how to make unreality look acceptable and make a dangerous situation appear palatable. In the el bizzarro world at Reuters and those the wire service interviewed for its article: A change in…

There I was this morning at the New York Times online op-ed page, the scene of so much self-righteous hand-wringing in recent weeks over the violence in our culture and rhetoric.  I was deciding whether to subject myself first to Gail Collins or Charles Blow, when my eye was drawn to the ad you see here for something called "Project Blackout."  A busty babe wields an assault rifle the Times…

During his (in)famous "Psycho Talk" segment of his Thursday evening MSNBC show, host Ed Schultz played the clip of Rick Santorum's interview with Terry Jeffrey of CNSNews.com where Santorum challenged President Obama's plea of ignorance on the question of when a person receives the right to life. Schultz, himself a loud-mouth liberal radio talk show host prone to crazy talk branded Santorum'…

"Holy Cross gets nod for new MoCo hospital: Women's advocates concerned." That's how the Washington Post's online "On Faith" feature teased a Metro section front-pager in the paper's January 21 print edition. [see screen capture below page break]