Media Bias Debate

The comparison of the results contained in the April 2010 Monthly Treasury Statement released this afternoon to April of last year is bad enough. But if the American people knew that April 2010 came in about a quarter-trillion dollars worse than both 2007 and 2008 with almost 40% less in tax collections, most of them would be appalled. Many more than are already doing so would be questioning what…

It doesn't seem like this exercise should be that tough. The government issues Daily Treasury Statements telling everybody what went in and out on a given business day. At the end of the month, the last Daily Treasury Statement has a record (admittedly jumbled and larded with lots of bureaucratic excess) of all receipts and disbursements for the month. The folks at the Congressional Budget…

Dan Rather just won’t go away nor update his obstinate refusal to acknowledge liberal media bias. Confronted with MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski’s observation that the mainstream media lack “balance” and convey “a liberal world view” (earlier NB item), Rather rejected the premise and offered up a banal defense: “What is the definition of liberal? I myself favor strong military, tight money, and clean…

Five weeks ago (covered at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), the Big Three Networks' combined evening news audiences dropped to below 20 million -- an audience about 5% less than what Matt Drudge in the summer of 2006 headlined as “TV’s Lowest Week.” Three weeks ago (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), their combined audience came in at 19.61 million, down over 12% from the previous year. For the week of…

If a conservative or Republican uttered the nonsense to be revealed shortly, we'd justifiably never hear the end of it on the late-night comedy shows and elsewhere. As it is, former car czar Steve Rattner's "creative" term for fibbing has and probably will continue to get little coverage outside of Detroit. Rattner's risible rendition of reality spewed forth before he spoke at a Federal…

Update - 5/11, 7:15 PM | Lachlan Markay: Associated Content responded to Mr. Schneker's allegations in an email. Details below.A conservative writer is calling for a boycott of the popular online news site Associated Content after it allegedly heavily edited or deleted much of his work, and refused to compensate him properly.  Marc Schenker, the writer who claims he was censored, says his…

President Barack Obama's second nominee to the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan, is drawing fire from both liberals and conservatives to such an extent that her challenge in the confirmation hearings "will be to show that while she may hail from Harvard, she has the heart of an empathetic, all-American patriot."At least that's Stuart Taylor Jr.'s take in a May 10 Newsweek "Web exclusive" that garnered…

Which is more newsworthy: hearsay accounts of racial slurs unsupported by video evidence of the alleged incident, or video of a protester calling for violent revolution against the federal government, the imposition of socialism, and the annexation of the Southwestern states for Mexico?If you chose the latter, you're probably not a journalist of the self-proclaimed "mainstream" variety. The…

On Friday, in the course of a general complaint about the relative lack of coverage of the flooding in Nashville and much of Tennessee, the Associated Press received a deserved compliment for its coverage from Investors Business Daily, which correctly implied that AP can't make its subscribers publish its output. But IBD missed one item, and understandably so. On Wednesday, the AP ran an article…

Most economists are not susceptible to partisanship in their work, a new scholarly study finds. But anyone who reads Paul Krugman's columns in the New York Times will hardly be surprised to learn he is a glaring exception to the study's findings. He consistently changes his fiscal views depending on the party in power."Krugman has changed his tune in a significant way regarding the budget deficit…

The editorialists at Investors Business Daily are not pleased with the values on display in the relative importance given to three major stories: the deaths of 11 oil rig workers off the Gulf Coast, the oil spill that resulted from that rig's collapse, and the historic flooding in Tennessee that has taken at least 30 lives. Here's the newspaper's take: What does it say when 11 men who perish on…

This item will not be filed under "Mother's Day Role-Modeling Behavior." In this story, it's hard to figure out what's more outrageous: The willful defacement of property -- in this case, a brand-new $5 million pedestrian bridge by an alleged adult in her mid-40s who is the mother of a teenaged son -- or the near non-reaction to wanton vandalism perpetrated in broad daylight by her and others on…

One of the worst ways that the lack of ideological diversity in America's newsrooms shows forth is in the media's treatment of sensational accusations against the current president.Oftentimes, explosive allegations against presidents are either untrue or drastically overstated: George W. Bush deliberately lying to get the U.S. to war so he can cash in or deliberately ignoring Hurricaine Katrina…