Media Bias Debate

Two University of Chicago researchers recently measured ideological segregation on the Web -- the idea that in this new media age, people can avoid news outlets that challenge their ideological presuppositions. Their report, “Ideological Segregation Online and Offline,” tracked how people of different political views move around the Internet. One finding: The New York Times is a liberal newspaper…

A Sarasota, Florida, doctor recently lost his medical license on the basis of an error he made in 2006 in an abortion procedure where he mistakenly took the life of the healthier fraternal twin of a boy diagnosed in utero with Down Syndrome.In covering the story, most media outlets have noted that Dr. Matthew Kachinas aborted "the wrong baby." Baptist theologian and radio program host Dr. Albert…

The Wall Street Journal's headline and reporter Jeff Bennett's opening paragraph concerning Chrysler Corporation's first announcement of financial results since 2007 got right to the key points: Chrysler Reports $4 Billion Loss Since Exiting Bankruptcy Chrysler Group LLC lost nearly $4 billion since exiting bankruptcy last year, but the company reported a first-quarter operating profit this…

Just call it "journalism as usual." One thing you can say about the Associated Press's and most of the rest of the establishment media's treatment of former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick during the past two-plus years is that they've been almost totally consistent. They pretend not to know or care what political party Kilpatrick represented throughout his political career, and fail to…

Over the past year since its inception, the media have worked hard to discredit and denigrate the tea party movement. News organizations employed various strategies, from dismissing the protests as astroturf, to using derogatory nicknames for participants, and finally labeling it as a violent extremist fringe. In their futile attempt to get something to stick, the media have become increasingly…

President Obama has extensive ties to Goldman Sachs. Yet even given record-breaking financial contributions and sketchy relationships between Goldman executives and Obama officials at the highest level, the mainstream media will not afford Obama the same scrutiny it gave to George W. Bush during the collapse of Enron.Obama's inflation-adjusted $1,007,370.85 in contributions from Goldman employees…

Two weeks ago (noted at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), the combined audience for the Big Three Networks' Evening News shows for the week of March 29 fell to just below 20 million. That audience was about 5% less than what Matt Drudge in the summer of 2006 headlined as "TV's Lowest Week." The Big Three's combined audience crawled back above 20 million during the week of April 5. But Chris Ariens of…

Surprise: NBC finally found a business it likes - even a business decision it likes: companies that help homeowners who decide to walk away from their mortgages. "New figures show foreclosures in the U.S. are up about 35-percent from a year ago," Matt Lauer kicked off an April 20 segment of "Today" that encouraged homeowners - even those financially comfortable - to simply walk away. "And a…

One of the things taught in journalism schools, at least when it comes crime reporting, is that when someone charged with a crime, you carefully craft your rhetoric because in the United States, you're presumed innocent until proven guilty. But what if you're journalist and you're making accusations of crime where there's not even a charge? On NBC's April 18 "The Chris Matthews Show," Time…

CNN's Rick Sanchez named me and NewsBusters to "the very top" of his daily 'List That U Don't Want 2 Be On' on his Rick's List show on Monday. Sanchez criticized me for apparently not being able to tell he was "joking" during a segment on April 15 where he stated that "you think it's too cold to have a volcano" in Iceland [audio available here].I have been monitoring the anchor since September…

On the surface, it's one of the Associated Press's better dispatches from the real world on the state of the economy as people are experiencing it. Datelined in Twinsburg, Ohio, Megan Barr's Monday morning report, "Recession is ending? Some Americans don't buy it," does a good job of mixing macro and micro elements, painting a picture of a struggling town, a non-improving state economy (now…

The "Eric Massa saga [is] just heating up," promises the headline for Jonathan Allen's April 19 Politico story about the latest development in the swift demise of the tickle-happy freshman Democrat:For nearly a year, the allegations of scandalous activity in former Rep. Eric Massa’s office were kept quiet — by the congressman, by male aides who accuse him of sexually harassing them and by other…

James Pinkerton of the New America Foundation and Fox News contributor Judy Miller both gave kudos to the Media Research Center and Eyeblast.tv on Saturday's Fox News Watch. Pinkerton applauded Eyeblast for hosting a clip of NBC's Kelly O'Donnell questioning of black tea partyer and his "best answer." (See the Friday NB post, “White NBC Reporter Confronts Black Man at Tea Party Rally: 'Have You…

In one of those "I guess we have to mention it, but we'll get it out of the way quickly" reports, the Associated Press on Monday, April 12 tersely told its readers the following about the failure of an attempt in California to repeal California's Proposition 8 (reproduced in full for fair use and discussion purposes): What AP chose to avoid telling the rest of the nation is why "more…