Media Bias Debate

All day Friday the newspapers, TV stations, radio, and the Internet were abuzz with Barack Obama's failed joke about the Special Olympics Thursday night on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno. In shades of John Kerry's failed joke about the unschooled being "stuck in Iraq," the president's apologists said he was merely joking and didn't mean to say anything disparaging about people with developmental…

Andrew Breitbart, the founding editor of the conservative Big Hollywood blog, described MSNBC "Hardball" host Chris Matthews as a reality TV star trying to keep his short-lived 1990s celebrity status alive.BREITBART: Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann are basically Gary Busey and Jeff Conway.[...]BREITBART: My friend's a Beverly Hills psychiatrist who deals with the neuroses of the stars every…

The Media Research Center (MRC) today proudly announces that HBO's Bill Maher is the "Winner" of Quote of the Year for tastelessly suggesting that Sarah Palin's teenage daughter Bristol was the actual birth mother of her infant son, Trig. Maher was selected by the more than 800 attendees of the MRC's annual DisHonors Awards Gala, held last night at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Washington, D.C.…

An important story appeared in the Cincinnati Enquirer on Tuesday. Here's how it began (Warren County is adjacent to and northeast of Cincinnati's Hamilton County): County: no more food stamps for rich Warren County’s poor (population) does not include someone with $80,000 in the bank, a paid-off $311,000 home and a Mercedes, members of the Warren County Board of Commissioners said Tuesday. And…

This was inevitable with the economic crisis. In The Nation magazine, leftist media critics John Nichols and Robert McChesney announce their utopian intentions to have the government intervene heavily in the media sphere and spread their tentacles all over the project of insuring an "independent" media in every American city and town. It’s time for an "immediate journalism economic stimulus," and…

This morning, MSNBC’s Alex Witt was in full damage control mode, working whatever apologist explanations she could find into her reluctant coverage of last night's teleprompter-free “Tonight Show” appearance by the president. [audio available here]Obama was doing quite well at staying on message, when he made the following comment in reaction to Jay Leno's question about his infamous lack of…

We hope Chris Matthews isn't too jealous of Bill Weir. Conquering fierce competition, the ABC reporter pulled out a victory last night in the "Obamagasm Award" at the MRC's DisHonors Awards. [audio available here]Media Research Center President and NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell chatted about the ceremony this morning on "Fox & Friends."JULIET HUDDY, co-host: There's something called the…

Media Research Center President Brent Bozell had already been scheduled to appear on today's "Fox & Friends" to discuss last night's MRC Gala and Media DisHonors Awards, but President Barack Obama's laid a golden egg with his joke about the Special Olympics last night on NBC's "The Tonight Show." So the latest Obama gaffe and the media's interest in it was the first topic co-hosts Steve Doocy…

Last night's Media Research Center Gala and Media DisHonors Awards was a rousing success and was pretty darn funny to boot. Fortunately we got it all on video over at EyeBlast.tv, the MRC's video archive home. We'll also post some of the highlights here at NewsBusters throughout the day. Stay tuned for video clips of Joe the Plumber, Brit Hume, Mark Levin, and much more.

OK, this story has GOT to have been written by that satirical website The Onion! Barack Obama is about to be crowned "Newsmaker of the Year" by the National Newspaper Publishers Assn. The ceremony is to take place this afternoon,March 20, at the White House. And here is the kicker... it's CLOSED to the press! Seriously! This dude is getting an award from the press and he's closed the ceremony…

Two March 19 editorials on Obama's failure to create post-partisanship in D.C., both from lefties, can't be farther apart from each other in their conclusions. Marc Dunkelman's in U.S. News blames everyone but Obama for the failure to invent that mythic bipartisan Washington while Mort Kondracke's Real Clear Politics piece lays the fault squarely at Obama's door step.But, the differences in the…

The Hollywood Reporter's (THR.com) James Hibberd is reporting that the TV networks are "reluctantly" shuffling their on air schedules to fulfill their "responsibility" to air President Obama's important campaign speech... er, I mean address to the nation next week. The Nets are solemnly claiming the mantle of the patriotic American fulfilling their civic duty to air presidential addresses, it…

Manny Aragon was one of New Mexico's most powerful law makers and power brokers. A former Senate president, Aragon was this week convicted and given a 67 month sentence for lining his pockets and that of his co-conspiritors with millions in fraudulently billed state contracting money. While his "iconic" status is mentioned and his long standing position as a "Senate leader" is dutifully…