Media Bias Debate

Outrage over political donations by Fox News's parent company News Corp. always seemed like a bit of a stretch when it implied that those contributions affected Fox's political coverage. Many news media outlets are owned by larger companies. Those companies' activities don't ipso facto affect news coverage at their media subsidiaries. So when NewsBusters pointed out that 88 percent of political…

I tried to find a nicer way to put it in the headline. But I can't. At the Associated Press, Economics Writer Martin Crutsinger's apparent plug-and-play report less than an hour after the issuance of Uncle Sam's August Monthly Treasury Statement on Monday (his item is time-stamped at 2:56 p.m., which follows the Treasury Department's 2:00 p.m. release by less than an hour) contains three…

Appearing on MSNBC to present his magazine's feature piece critical of the "Baby Boomer" generation, James Bennet of The Atlantic named George W. Bush, Newt Gingrich, and Bill Clinton as the three worst "baby boomers" who did the most harm to the country's political culture and its economy. "It'd be hard not to point to George W. Bush as having done a lot of damage," Bennet asserted.  Bush, he…

New York Times reporter Robert Pear ought to consider moonlighting as a stand-up comic in the tradition of Steven Wright. Wright's deadpan delivery is legendary. Pear's deadpan lines in his article about the immense paperwork burden heading the economy's way in the form of requiring IRS 1099 forms to be issued to each and every person paid $600 or more during the course of a calendar year for…

Amidst a war of words with the White House, character attacks from the Left, and a New York Times hit piece on his connections with lobbyists, House Minority Leader John Boehner has received positive media coverage – from MSNBC of all places. The network ran a portrait of Boehner's childhood on its 11 a.m. news hour, and again on "Andrea Mitchell Reports" at 1 p.m."The public hears a lot of the…

Thousands of protesters descended on Washington, Sunday, for the 9/12 rally and many rallied with MRC signs proclaiming, "Don't believe the liberal media!" The message could be seen in the background of cable coverage, including a live report from CNN. (See picture at right.) To see conservative journalist Andrew Breitbart and others sporting the MRC's signs, see a selection of pictures below the…

"Mr. Boehner's ties to lobbyists seem especially deep," New York Times reporter Eric Lipton wrote of the House Republican Leader yesterday. Well, they're not, and therein lies the problem: Lipton apparently premised his article not on facts and data, but on what he thought seemed reasonable.Had Lipton stooped to investigate some of the serious claims he was making, he might have discovered that…

MRC President and NewsBusters founder Brent Bozell appeared on Friday night's Hannity and knocked a soft Obama interview by George Stephanopoulos and Harry Smith's contention on CBS that the stimulus bill wasn't "big enough." Tackling the media's most egregious examples of liberal bias, Bozell quipped, "Obama needs the media to pull his chestnuts out of the fire in this campaign." [MP3 audio here…

The New York Times's lobbyist double standard lives on. Since Barack Obama became president, the paper has routinely overlooked the vast disconnect between his rhetoric on lobbying's role on the political process - there really isn't one, if you believe Barack - and his actions on the issue.But while the Gray Lady all but ignores Obama's deep ties with lobbyists and the industry groups they…

Though its true nature was largely ignored by the local media at the event (noted on Tuesday at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), Ted Strickland's unhinged Labor Day speech at the AFL-CIO's annual picnic at Cincinnat's Coney Island has, with the help of the Republican Governors Association (RGA), garnered quite a bit of statewide attention. During his rant, Democrat Strickland denounced the Republican…

It seems reasonable from their coverage in anticipation of the Census Bureua's release of income and poverty statistics this week that Hope Yen and Liz Sidoti of the Associated Press have a roof over their heads and aren't particularly worried about where their next meal is coming from. If so, good for them; may those circumstances continue. What's remarkable, though, is how a government report…

Adopting language and tactics more typical of tyrants, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius yesterday sent a public letter to the head of a health insurance industry group demanding that carriers stop "falsely blaming premium increases for 2011 on the patient protections in the Affordable Care Act," and that "that there will be zero tolerance for this type of misinformation and…

In what had to be the ultimate in condescension and elitism, MSNBC's "Morning Joe" brought Pastor Terry Jones on the show merely to lecture him on Christianity, cutting him off before he could even respond. Co-host Mika Brzezinski explained to him "we don't really need to hear anything else, so thanks." Newsbusters' Mark Finkelstein first briefly reported on this segment this morning. Panel…

For the record, here are the first and fourth sentences from the Federal Reserve's Beige Book released earlier this afternoon: Reports from the twelve Federal Reserve Districts suggested continued growth in national economic activity during the reporting period of mid-July through the end of August, but with widespread signs of a deceleration compared with preceding periods. ... However, the…