Media Bias Debate

Filing his January 1 story from Santiago, Cuba, Washington Post foreign service staffer William Booth paid homage to the 50-year mark of the Castro revolution, pinning blame on "mostly hostile U.S. presidents" and a "decades-long trade and travel embargo" for the big 5-0 being celebrated as a "low-key event that was far removed from the triumphant displays and mass rallies of [Cuba's] socialist…

Looking for a column loaded with racism, hyperbole, praise for a man embroiled in scandal, and an obvious disregard for the integrity of a Senate seat?  Then you're in luck if you've read Ruben Navarrette's latest efforts. Completely dropping the ball on why some people are apprehensive about any appointment that Rod Blagojevich could make for the vacant Senate seat, Ruben litters his article…

The Cincinnati Enquirer's coverage (photo is from that coverage) of a local press conference and demonstration relating to the Israeli-Hamas conflict in Israel and Gaza has been atrocious. I suspect that the Enquirer is not unique in its egregious journalistic failures. The two stories involved, both by Rebecca Goodman, are (original Cincinnati reference HT to Atlas Shrugs):-- Dec. 31 -- "Area…

From June: 'No ice at the North Pole,' to January: 'Sea Ice Ends Year at Same Level as 1979' No pairing of any two stories better illustrates the child-like alarmism of global warming religionists than these two stories. The first from June of 2008 claims that all the ice at the North Pole has melted and will be gone for the first time ever, while the second shows that by January of 2009 the…

Michelle Malkin called it, as did several NewsBusters commenters. Their prediction was that newspapers on the brink would be asking for government bailouts.It came to pass in late November that seven Connecticut legislators asked the state's Department of Economic and Community Development for help in keeping the New Britain Herald and the Bristol Press afloat. A JPEG of the full letter with…

Looks like ABC News is starting out 2009 with a partisan bang. On its main page, ABC News is hosting a slide show featuring what it is calling the "All Time Dumb Quotes." Now, these are not all strictly political dumb quotes, to be sure. They also have the empty headed Christina Aguilera, that sharp as a tack Jessica Simpson and other denizens of the Hollywood Mensa club among the 16 featured…

Liberal journalism professor Jay Rosen was puzzled when Washington Post columnist Dan Froomkin wondered aloud whether he and other journalists should be skeptical of Barack Obama. Conservative blogger Jon Henke was downright flabbergasted: I'm not sure I understand why this is even a question. Indeed, it would seem to me that it would be grounds for immediate dismissal. "Immediate dismissal"…

By now, many readers know the New York Times's definition of a "good Catholic."A good NYT Catholic doesn't necessarily need to go to Church very often. He or she focuses on the importance of alleviating poverty and other world problems, almost invariably through government handout programs and not individual or private charity. Despite the long standing of "just war" guidance, this person opposes…

While, instead of simply reporting the news, the Associated Press spends its days looking for every which way it can find to attack George W. Bush, Governor Sarah Palin and any number of other conservatives or Republicans, it has a corresponding penchant to go easy on The One and his Democrat cohorts. Nothing is a better illustration of the difference between the AP's treatment of the right and…

For at least ten seconds there, it appeared Margaret Warner thought PBS stood for the Palestinian Broadcast Service. On last night's NewsHour Ms. Warner, whilst interviewing Israel's Ambassador to the United States Sallai Meridor, posed one of the dumbest questions in the long, dumb history of broadcast journalism.  So banal was her query that there was for nearly five seconds the most pregnant…

On Tuesday’s CBS Early Show, fill-in co-host Chris Wragge seemed to feel sorry for Barack Obama having to withstand the media spotlight while vacationing in Hawaii: "Coming up, life in the media bubble. How is Barack Obama adjusting to the press following his every move?" However, as correspondent Ben Tracy later reported, that spotlight is not exactly harsh: "Tours of Obama's childhood stop at…

In the Chicago Sun-Times' Top Year-ends from its bottom rear-end today, columnist Richard Roeper picked Governor Sarah Palin as his top GOOF for 2008... yet got owned himself by awarding her his dubious distinction based on at least one lie and a few dubious assumptions. Roeper, a man that clearly imagines himself the living embodiment of the lead character on Seinfeld, lapsed into the most…

The Associated Press is classy, indeed. They can't even keep sniping at Sarah Palin out of a story announcing the blessed birth of her grandson. Ah, but wait, it gets even more annoying because not only did the AP snipe at Palin in its first birth announcement story, once called on it the AP went back twice to rearrange the piece rewriting history to make it seem as if they never sniped at her in…

Well, it seems that the folks at Vanity Fair realized that they won't have George W. Bush to kick around any more. So they decided to launch the journalistic equivalent of thermonuclear war against him in an attempt to get its shot at a "draft of history." In a 14 web-page tome (the photo at the top right is at its beginning) that fancies itself an "oral history," the magazine hauls out every…