Media Bias Debate

Give the guy a break, he deserves it. That was Katie Couric's message a week ago in her Notebook blog entry about President Obama's 49th birthday (emphasis mine):The job has aged him, as it did his predecessors. Dr. Michael Roizen at the Cleveland Clinic stated constant stress can age the Commander in Chief two years for every one year in office.So I guess that means he's really turning 50.…

Earlier today, NB's Lachlan Markey covered Bill O'Reilly's interview with the Fox Business Channel's Charles Gasparino.In that interview, Gasparino confirmed what the New York Post reported in April of last year, namely that "GE Execs Encouraged CNBC Staff to Go Easy on Obama."The suits at GE, including Chairman Jeff Inmelt, had a clear motivation for encouraging their reporters to lighten up,…

No matter what happens, even surrounding his personal life or his pet cause global warming, former Vice President Al Gore just isn't going away. During an Aug. 10 conference call, Gore launched into a critique of the media's recent coverage of ClimateGate, specifically blogs, talk radio and "biased right-wing media." "Well I believe Mark Twain often gets the credit for the saying ... that a…

Those who don't believe that high taxes on the rich don't influence economic activity or economic behavior, which of course includes many in the establishment press, are going to have a tough time explaining away this brief item that's being reported in the Associated Press: Tour officials hampered by UK tax rules European Tour officials are in talks with the British government over tax rules…

There are quite a few shaky assertions in Alan Zibel's Associated Press report yesterday about Freddie Mac's latest quarterly loss ($6 billion), its latest bailout installment request to the U.S. Treasury ($1.8 billion), and the cumulative taxpayer bailout amounts that have been paid out to Freddie Mac and big sister Fannie Mae thus far ($148.2 billion) -- too many to cover in a blog post. So I'…

The past week has brought forth a couple of items from the Associated Press's -- and for the most part the establishment press's -- special corner of journalistic unreality. It is an area where human-caused global warming is still a given, and where that the nastiness known as ClimateGate that exposed the entire global warming enterprise as entirely unsupported by verifiable scientific data doesn…

While filming a segment for her new TLC program in Homer, Alaska, former governor Sarah Palin was recently accosted by one Kathleen Gustafson, a local bearing a large handwritten banner reading "Worst Governor Ever."Several news agencies and networks have picked up on the story, uncritically relaying that Gustafson is simply a local teacher. But that's not accurate, as MacRanger of the Mac's Mind…

A week ago, AP Science Writer Malcolm Ritter committed a serious act of journalism by telling readers what is really going on in stem cell science. It ought to be required reading for the Obama administration, which seems to be making a crusade out of human embryonic stem cell research (hESCR) while acting to stifle what appears to be significant progress in adult stem cell research (ASCR). The…

For the media, "Mission Accomplished" represents everything that was wrong with the George W. Bush administration and its war policy. The image of Bush declaring unequivocal victory mere weeks after the invasion of Iraq has been ballyhooed as a visual representation of Bush's arrogance, naivete, even dishonesty (the media contrived most of this meme - more on that below).Will Barack Obama have a…

On August 3 ("U.S. To Train 3,000 Offshore IT Workers"), InformationWeek.com's Paul McDougall reported that the U.S. Agency for International Development is operating at cross purposes with the Obama administration's stated goal to keep high-tech jobs in the U.S. USAID has since attempted to do some backing and filling about the assistance it is providing in Sri Lanka, but its arguments may ring…

What follows was eminently predictable, but noting it is nonetheless necessary. Shirley Sherrod, and to a lesser extent her husband Charles, were media celebrities for a while in late July. Readers might have noticed their near absence from establishment media news reports during the past seven days. It would be easy to think that this has occurred because the story played itself out, with…

In what I believe is the first direct acknowledgment by the wire service of what so many have known for so long, the Associated Press's Tom Krisher wrote the following in an August 5 story about plans for an initial public offering by government-controlled General Motors (bolds are mine throughout this post): Ever since the Obama administration gave the automaker a $50 billion dollar survival…

Good Morning America's Yunji de Nies on Friday touted Michelle Obama's "five-star," "luxurious" vacation to Spain, skipping any discussion of controversy over the $148,000 trip. In January of 2009, however, the very same program chided Laura Bush for introducing new presidential dinnerware, despite the fact that the bill was being paid by a private organization. De Nies gushed, "They toured the…

Ah yes - liberalism, or as its recent branding has labeled it, progressivism, is the most open-minded and culturally sensitive place to be on the ideological spectrum. Those who subscribe to those beliefs are far more enlightened and far more able to respect those from all over the globe, or least all over the United States, right? Not the case with liberal talk show host Bill Press. On his…