Media Bias Debate

Appearing on Tuesday's CBS Early Show, Arizona Senator John McCain spoke of his admiration for Sarah Palin and criticized continued media efforts to go after his former running mate: "I continue to hold her in the highest regard and continue to be entertained by the attacks of the liberal media against her. It's very entertaining to watch." McCain made the comment as part of his response to…

Update (15:20 EDT): Fargo, N.D.-based radio host  friend of NewsBusters Rob Port takes on this Newsweek item on his Say Anything blog today and eviscerates David Graham's article as error-laden and grossly misleading. Newsweek -- the floundering weekly news magazine that was recently sold for the princely sum of $1.00 -- apparently assigns a pretty low value on the intelligence of its readers…

Whatever happened to Ed Schultz's solidarity with the working man? Isn't that supposed to be the essence of Schultz's shtick?  But on his MSNBC show this evening, Ed played the paid-by-management Pinkerton, busting his nightstick over the head of . . . Juan Williams. Proclaimed anti-worker Ed: "when you fire somebody: it's over, move on. Don't go back over spilled milk." Ed Schultz,…

On Monday's "Morning Joe," co-host Joe Scarborough cast Fox News as an unabashedly conservative network while trumpeting his own show as a neutral voice of sanity in a polarized news environment. "In this world of Balkanized cable news outlets...it is kind of nice being Switzerland," he gloated, asserting the neutrality of his "Morning Joe" program. "This show is a safe house where people…

MSNBC's Chris Matthews and CBS's Lesley Stahl were two of the targets in the latest "Media Mash" segment on Fox News Channel's "Hannity" program. NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell appeared on the October 22 edition of the program  to look at how the media have been denigrating the Tea Party movement. [Video of the segment available after the page break]

The folks at MSNBC are for some reason still under the impression that they are anything but a far less successful liberal alternative to Fox News. The former channel's president, Phil Griffin, tried to perpetuate that delusion in a blog post by New York Times media blogger Brian Stelter on Sunday. Griffin claimed that MSNBC, unlike Fox News, does not help guests who are political candidates…

Not that it justifies the horrible consequences of leaking classifed information, thereby endangering our troops, our allies, our friends, and their families (of course it doesn't), but the WikiLeaked documents being carried at outlets like the New York Times are revealing some truths that are proving quite inconvenient for Iraq war opponents. Earlier today (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), I…

On Fox News Sunday, Brit Hume condemned NPR for its “howling double standard” in firing Juan Williams for expressing an opinion, a standard “manifestly not being applied to other NPR people.” He forwarded the theory that “in the culture of NPR, appearing on Fox is a sin” and “for an African-American man” to “be kind of a Bill Cosby liberal, not a down-the-line liberal, is a sin as well.”  …

Back in March, in the runup to the final ObamaCare vote in the House, the establishment press was thrilled when the Congressional Budget Office issued a report estimating that ObamaCare would, in the CBO's words, "produce a net reduction in federal deficits of $138 billion over the 2010–2019 period as result of changes in direct spending and revenue." At the time, NB's Brent Baker noted how…

The WikiLeaksters seem to have inadvertently done history a bit of a favor in the their obsession, with the help of heavy-breathing media mouthpieces like the New York Times, to release classified military documents. It seems that some of those documents reveal the utter untruthfulness of a core claim of Iraq War opponents, namely that "We now know that there were no weapons of mass…

At an open NewsBusters thread this morning, commenter "ThisnThat" pointed to a Friday unbylined Associated Press item that twice used the label "ultraconservative" to describe Nevada U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle. Just for the heck of it, AP also threw in Reid's reference to Angle as being "too extreme," and his parroting of that biennial Democratic falsehood that a GOP candidate is for…

  “Why is it okay for Nina to express opinions, as she has tartly, sharply, unashamedly and openly” while serving as “an honored correspondent” for NPR, while Juan Williams, “because he expresses his opinions, gets canned from NPR?” So Charles Krauthammer demanded while sitting Friday with Totenberg on the same Inside Washington set. “In fact, the standard ought to be lower in the case of…

When a Democrat or leftist makes an ill-advised remark, it seems that there's a three-stage process at the Associated Press, and perhaps in most other establishment press outlets, for handling it. It goes roughly like this: Stage 1 - Ignore it as long as you can. If there isn't much outcry, keep ignoring it. Stage 2 - If there ends up being enough of an outcry from conservatives or…

Hey, it's Friday night.  Time to kick back, relax, and have a few chuckles, courtesy Ed Schultz.  On his MSNBC show this evening, Schultz, somehow managing to keep a straight face, claimed that NPR is "as down the middle as you can get." Schultz served up his side-splitter in condemning Jim DeMint and other Republicans for proposing the federal defunding of NPR.  In the world according to…