Media Bias Debate

Failing to Grace the WaPo Front PageThe Washington Post has certainly taken a timeworn media tack in it's coverage of the latest instance of Israel stubbornly insisting on continuing to exist.  That being: keep nearly all mentions of the prolonged and incessant attacks of Israel by the Palestinians off the front page and to an absolute minimum, then deliver maximum coverage of the Israelis'…

"Garbage piles up, even after snow has melted," reads a December 29 Seattle Post-Intelligencer story posted to the Web site Sunday evening. Yet nowhere in the story by staffers Brad Wong or Eric Nalder was any blame for the garbage glut laid at the doorstep of the city's Democratic chief executive. Mayor Greg Nickels may be partly to blame for the trash backlog because of his stubborn refusal to…

History will tell that the New York Times actually endorsed John McCain as its preferred Republican nominee, albeit in a hold-your-nose fashion. History will also tell that the paper began souring on its former favorite "maverick" and moderate Republican almost immediately after he clinched the nomination and becoming the only thing standing between the White House and a historic Democratic…

The Palestinians raise their kids to hate Jews. The Israelis have endured decades of acts of terror against their own children and have generally acted with forbearance in reply. The UN has been vehemently and irrationally anti-Israeli since day one. The questions of "right of return" and the "two state solution" have dogged international politics for a long time. And what is the Timesonline…

In another of a never ending line of self-congratulatory but quickly fading news paper journalists, Newark Star-Ledger writer Paul Mulshine has bravely taken it upon himself to warn us all that we'll miss him and his kind when they are gone. By his kind, of course, he means print journalists. Mulshine assures us all that, Mencken-like, he feels that the masses are idiots that cannot even…

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has launched a wonderful little feature that will run until Barack Obama takes the oath of office next month. They are calling it "Dear Mr. Obama" and it is a heartwarming exercise in child indoctrination and brainwashing. The Post-Gazette will be publishing letters from local students to Obama asking him for all sorts of global warming fixes, Iraq war enders, and big…

Here are the key numbers (in red) in Uncle Sam's November Personal Income and Outlays report (the July : Common sense says that the chart's results after adjusting for inflation are more important (identified as "Chained [2000] dollars") than those in current dollars. Consmers' disposable income went up 1.0% in real (after-inflation) terms in November after a 0.7% increase in October. It took a…

Imagine there's no religion, it's easy for The New York Times to do -- even in a Christmas Day editorial that somehow forgets that Christmas is about Christ's birth. In fact, the NYT decided that this Christmas was its opportunity to wallow in worse-than-ever sentiments and to bemoan that this year's Christmas isn't as good as it used to be. Oh, they tried to dress it up a bit by saying it is…

I held this item for a couple of days after I found it because I didn't want to spoil Christmas. Readers can fairly criticize me for waiting. It is truly astonishing how little attention this two week-old story has received (Warning: Very disturbing content; the underlying news at caritas.org is here; bolds are mine) Out of food, Zimbabweans eating cow dung Harare, Dec 10, 2008 / 08:01 pm --…

MSN TV reporter, Dave Lake, has decided in his infinite wisdom that Tina Fey ridiculing Governor Sarah Palin is the top TV moment from the 2008 TV season. Aren't you surprised that making fun of Sarah Palin has become the top TV moment? I mean, it's incredible that the liberal media has decided that out of the entire TV season, this is the top moment! I'm SHOCKED, to say the least. (Don't worry…

There was no Memorex around when the brontosauri were bidding bye-bye, but I think we have a pretty good idea of what they sounded like as they were going extinct.  Just listen to Brian Williams this morning.  Appearing on Morning Joe, the NBC Nightly News anchor lamented the decline of "classically-trained" journalists in favor of guys with "an opinion and a modem."  A question from Pat Buchanan…

In 2005, I sensed that journalists in general prefer to call this time of the year in commerce that of “holiday shopping” instead of “Christmas shopping,” but that when it came to people losing their jobs, they preferred to describe layoffs as relating to “Christmas.” My instincts have been proven correct during the past three years. So did anything change in 2008? Not that much, but slightly in…

You would think from reading yesterday afternoon's report by the Associated Press's Tom Murphy that companies like Toyota, Nissan, and Honda are not that far from finding themselves in the situations US taxpayer bailout recipients General Motors and Chrysler are in. Murphy tries mightily to make the foreign-owned companies' situations look serious, at one point even putting out the howler that…