Media Bias Debate

A large grouping of newspaper publishers have joined together and launched a public relations campaign to inform readers that, yes, newspapers are still relevant -- despite the financial hardships and layoffs of thousands of employees industry wide. Unfortunately, the PR campaign does not seem to recognize that one of the main problems that newspapers are having is with their own content, not…

Yesterday was Pity the Poor President Day in Old Media.Early last night, I noted how the Associated Press's Ben Feller chose to characterize an already-planned visit by Barack and Michelle Obama to a DC elementary school as an "escape" that "surely made him happy for a while."A few hours ago, NB's Brent Baker reported with amazement the absurd attempts by CBS's Katie Couric and NBC's Brian…

Here are the January 2009 results (source articles - Detroit Free Press, Associated Press; December 2008 results on the right are from this USA Today report [scroll to bottom left at article]): General Motors - Down 48.9%Ford - Down 40.3%Chrysler - Down 54.8%Toyota - Down 31.7%Honda - Down 27.9%Nissan - Down 29.7%Relatively minor players Subaru and Hyundai posted gains (that's right) of 8% and…

I suspect most readers' first reaction to this will be, "There's no way George W. Bush would ever have gotten this level of sympathy from an Associated Press writer."You see, poor Barack Obama was having a hard time and getting stressed out after his first two weeks on the job. So he "escaped" with his wife to a Washington, DC public school.The Associated Press's ever-sympathetic (or, I should…

Disgraced former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was released shortly after midnight this morning, having served a 99-day jail term. Reporting the story, the Associated Press noted the pol's Democratic Party affiliation in the fourth paragraph of its story, after noting that he "looked thinner and his beard was fuller" than when he was admitted to jail. Yet in a 43-second AP video narrated by…

We have here a classic case of liberal bias in the Old Media. It isn't as dramatic as may others that we have seen since The One came onto the national scene, but it is the sort of bias that has been endemic in the Old Media for a very long time. In a February 1 story in the Chicago Tribune, we find the old trick of naming a think tank as a source, but not mentioning that it is a liberal think…

Don't like the notion of Wall Street employees receiving bonuses? Shoot the messenger - as Adam Green at The Huffington Post has done. In a Feb. 2 post on The Huffington Post, Green said it was bad form for CNBC "Street Signs" host Erin Burnett to even think about considering the other side of the anti-Wall Street bonus argument, since some Wall Street banks received TARP funds, courtesy of the…

**Video Below the Fold** **IMPORTANT UPDATE Below/Clarification on transcript** Apparently, President Barack Obama thought that Jessica Simpson's weight was something he needed to make fun of during his pre-Super Bowl interview with Matt Lauer on NBC Sunday. Seriously. Obama called Jessica Simpson a fatty on national TV. Lauer displayed for the audience the cover of a recent issue of the…

This is why newspapers deserve to be buried in the dust bin of history, at least unless they clean up their act. For well over 20 years a southwest suburban Chicago newspaper called The Reporter has employed a columnist named Michael M. Bates -- who is also a long time NewsBusters contributor. He has been their local conservative columnist for many years until, that is, his latest column on…

Sleep a little, miss a lot. As noted Friday evening (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), Jake Tapper at ABC's Political Punch blog revealed that former South Dakota senator Tom Daschle, Barack Obama's nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, had failed to pay over $100,000 in federal income taxes for 2005, 2006, and 2007, because he did not originally report the "the services of (a free)…

Sing it.... "I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony, I feel Obama in the air he makes us all friendly, he's the real thing" .... OK, maybe that wonderful sentiment can't last. But, as Andrew Breitbart reports, this emotional high has only lasted the Obamagassed Ashton Kutcher a mere 10 days. 10 measly days was all the love-your-neighbor that Mr. Demi Moore could take. Not long…

Remember the days when news agencies claimed they were the fourth estate? Remember when they claimed to be "objective" and pretended at being separate from the controlling power in Washington D.C.? Apparently that whole claim has proven somewhat chimeric if the several stories we've detailed this week are any indication. And now, to add to the gathering evidence that the Old Media are actively…

Former South Dakota Senator Tom Daschle (picture at right is part of a Getty Images pic at a related New York Times story) has just upped the ante in Washington's tax-avoiding/evading game of "Can you top this?" Whereas recently confirmed Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner "only" $40,000 in back taxes and interest, principally relating to unpaid Social Security and Medicare taxes (with a dash of…

Reporting on his January 29 State of the State Address in which Maryland's liberal Democratic governor promised new government spending programs and the continuance of a costly state college tuition freeze, the Baltimore Sun headlined the story  "O'Malley Sets a Leaner Course for Maryland."Yet as Sun reporters Laura Smitherman and Gadi Dechter made clear, O'Malley has made clear he hopes to avoid…