Media Bias Debate

The GOP as the party of obstructionism: it's a tried and true media meme, but very often falls a tad short of the truth. Yet on occasion, even stubborn facts are not enough to dispel such accusations.Some in the media have taken President Obama's recess appointment of Donald Berwick to the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services as an occasion to bash purportedly obstructionist…

This morning CNNMoney.com reports "Jobless claims slide in latest week."  The article starts:The number of Americans filing first-time claims for unemployment insurance fell last week, according to a government report released Thursday.There were 454,000 initial jobless claims filed in the week ended July 3, down 21,000 from an upwardly revised 475,000 in the previous week, the Labor Department…

Happy belated birthday, America, your presence in Afghanistan is "inherently corrupting." That's the message Rachel Maddow gave on her July 6 program.During the Bush administration, the Left often argued that the president had distracted America by engaging in hostilities in Iraq, bleeding resources and attention away from the real war on terror in Afghanistan, which had harbored al Qaeda pre-9…

Cenk Uygur, host of the left-wing internet talk show 'The Young Turks,' filled in for MSNBC host Dylan Ratigan during the 4PM ET hour on Wednesday and decried the nation's "shift to the Right." He lamented: "...when I started out I was a liberal Republican. No such thing exists anymore." [Audio available here]He wondered why the media hadn't reported on the supposed radical shift in American…

At the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog (HT Instapundit), Byron York documents the results of some Lexis Nexis searching: Total words about the NASA Muslim outreach program in the New York Times: 0. Total words about the NASA Muslim outreach program in the Washington Post: 0. Total words about the NASA Muslim outreach program on NBC Nightly News: 0. Total words about the NASA…

The first six words (bolded by me) of Deb Riechmann's report from Kabul, Afghanistan for the Associated Press are refreshing: "We are in this to win," Gen. David Petraeus said as he took the reins of an Afghan war effort troubled by waning support, an emboldened enemy, government corruption and a looming commitment to withdraw troops - even with no sign of violence easing. It would have been…

At this point, we all know the Dave Weigel saga, which is as a so-called blogger for The Washington Post, he made some disparaging remarks about the people he covered as a conservative beat blogger. That eventually led to his resignation at the Post and he addressed it on CNN's July 4 "Reliable Sources." Weigel was asked by host Howard Kurtz if in this day and age it was "an uncomfortable fit"…

Back in April, as ABC's Jake Tapper took over as interim host of This Week (pending the arrival of ex-CNNer Christiane Amanpour in August), the show asked the fact-checkers at PolitiFact to evaluate the truthfulness of statements made on the show.After nearly three months, the results show far more Democrats and liberals earning a "False" rating, with most of the "True" ratings going to…

Those looking for evidence that there is a move afoot in the establishment press to lower the bar for whatever economic accomplishments might be accomplished during the Obama administration will be interested in how the Associated Press's report on the government's June jobs report defined "normal" unemployment. Perhaps it's valid for reporters Jeannine Aversa and Christopher Rugaber to refer to…

At the Associated Press, Kelli Kennedy's Thursday report on fraud and abuse in the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which is well done in several aspects, nonetheless significantly understated its losses.The AP dispatch deals with a now-released Government Accountability Office report on the results of investigations in nine states. Here are the first four paragraphs of…

Today on CNN, Rick's List host Rick Sanchez was, as he likes to say, all over and drilling down on a story of major import.  No, nothing about the dismal unemployment numbers we're seeing this recovery summer.  Despite repeated teases on the topic, he didn't get around to it.Sanchez was all over and drilling down on the latest Mel Gibson antics, despite pushback from his audience:SANCHEZ: Some of…

You would think in the wake of the problems with former Washington Post blogger Dave Weigel in addition to abandoned plans by the Post's publisher Katharine Weymouth to charge lobbyists and trade groups thousands of dollars for access "to top congressional and administration officials for $25,000 a plate" at a dinner party her home, the folks at the Post would be a little more careful with their…