Media Bias Debate

The official announcement will apparently come tomorrow morning (NewsBusters’ Scott Whitlock reported on the early leaks last week): former Clinton campaign operative George Stephanopoulos will start Monday as co-anchor of ABC’s Good Morning America. He’ll also keep his job as the host of ABC’s This Week, at least for the time being.Here’s one yardstick for measuring the media’s response: Back in…

“Morning Joe” was a little tense this morning.Fresh off Donny Deutsch’s defense of Sen. Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) slavery analogy, Mike Barnicle asked GOP Chairman Michael Steele about what proposals the GOP favored for health-care reform.  Along the way, however, he used an unfortunate choice of words:MIKE BARNICLE: [...] What are you people for?MICHAEL STEELE: You people? [starts laughing] Who are…

Nightly News host Brian Williams on Tuesday continued his self-congratulatory tour of NBC programs, touting his five years as a news anchor. He appeared on the tabloid program Access Hollywood to be lauded as "great" and "the man." Co-host Billy Bush oozed, "He only knows about winning. For five straight years, number one in the evening news, the great Brian Williams." Is there any show silly…

Here's another entry for the revolving door file: Politico's Jonathan Allen (pictured at right), formerly of Congressional Quarterly and former Sen. Paul Sarbanes' office, will take over as the top staffer at Debbie Wasserman Schultz's DWS PAC, according to Roll Call (h/t e-mail tipster Bob Foster). For his part, Allen, whose wife works as the communications director for freshman Sen. Kay Hagan…

Monday’s American Morning on CNN covered the ClimateGate scandal extensively, but slanted towards those who deny that the exposed e-mails amount to much. Anchor John Roberts let the interim director of the Climate Research Unit at the center of the controversy give his talking points without question. Out of the four segments on the scandal, two featured skeptics of the theory of manmade climate…

The earth is burning, the earth is burning! And it's all our fault! That's the essence of an editorial slated to appear in 56 newspapers worldwide today, including at least one in the U.S. Michelle Malkin pointedly notes that we aren't likely to see much interest in ClimateGate out of these "Chicken Little" publications. Here are some paragraphs from the very deep, very wide fever swamp, taken…

Blogger Doug Ross got to the news of the Congressional Budget Office's Monthly Budget Report (PDF) over the weekend, quite accurately observing that the establishment news coverage of its content barely existed. The results of searches at the Associated Press's raw feed page on "Congressional Budget Office" (not in quotes) and "CBO" confirm Doug's observation, as no result returned relates to…

For the dog-bites-man news category: Joe Scarborough had a moment of intellectual schizophrenia today.On MSNBC's Morning Joe, co-host Willie Geist and Politico.com executive editor Jim VandeHei were discussing a Politico story about internal political pressures at National Public Radio (NPR).  Apparently, NPR's top political correspondent Mara Liasson was asked by NPR executives to reconsider her…

The Obama Administration isn't the only government-funded entity campaigning against Fox News.  "NPR reporter pressured over Fox role" headlines an article by Josh Gerstein on Politico's Web site.  It begins:Executives at National Public Radio recently asked the network’s top political correspondent, Mara Liasson, to reconsider her regular appearances on Fox News because of what they perceived as…

Well, you can't say they aren't consistent.Two brief AP dispatches from December 2 and December 3 about Michael Toole, a Pennsylvania judge who has agreed to plead guilty to corruption-related charges, fail to mention that Toole has at least been a contributor to the Democratic Party, and appears very likely to have been a party member.This see-no-party treatment parallels local media coverage…

And they say a woman scorned can be merciless.  Eric Burns once served as the host of Fox News Watch.  It's reasonable to assume he won't be working there again any time soon.  In a December 2 Huffington Post article, "If I Still Worked at Fox News...," he describes it as "the right-wing partial-news-but-mostly-opinion network."A great deal of his bile, however, is directed at Glenn Beck:Actually…

On CNN Saturday Morning News today, anchors Betty Nguyen and T.J. Holmes reported on a U.S. senator who nominated his girlfriend to serve as a federal prosecutor earlier this year:HOLMES: Well, it is something -a player, a name that a lot of people normally might not know a whole lot about, from a state that most people don't know a whole lot about. He's been important in the health care debate.…

Normally, it's news when a leading politician in a country hosting a summit expresses harsh dissent against that summit's agenda -- or at least it is when a leftist is the dissenter. But I doubt that what Thor Pedersen, Speaker of the Danish Parliament, has to say about the upcoming COP15 Climate Summit will get much if any play in U.S. network newscasts or in the nation's establishment media…

Responding to President Obama criticizing media coverage of the White House jobs summit, on Friday’s Hardball on MSNBC, host Chris Matthews wondered why the President wasn’t more appreciative of all the media’s help: “Why would you ride the ref when he’s calling all the plays for you? What’s he out there bashing the media for?” During a town hall meeting in Allentown, Pennsylvania on Friday,…