Media Bias Debate

The Denver Post gave us a fine example -- not that they meant to -- of why every year our schools are turning out more semi-literate kids with over inflated egos. To the Post, of course, it's all good news that being poor in the Denver School Districts now qualifies a kid to be placed in the "gifted students" programs. To the Post this new classification "makes things more equitable" in those…

Many people have noticed a distinct change in the way that the media cover terrorism. Right after 9/11, the Society of Professional Journalists issued “diversity guidelines,” which are now posted online. No longer confined to the quaint idea of impartially reporting the news, the media were advised to change opinions, engage in public relations and "demystify" Islam and even ask "targeted…

Poynter Institute's Scholar for Journalistic Values Bob Steele must not plan on bending an elbow at a British pub anytime soon. Not only did Steele scold the journalists who agreed to keep Prince Harry's Afghanistan deployment secret, he condescendingly dismissed Harry's honorable service to his country (emphasis mine): But even if one accepts that news reports might heighten a danger, there are…

Former Navy signalman Hassan Abu-Jihaad was convicted today on charges "of leaking information about the movements and vulnerabilities of ships in his battle group to suspected terrorism supporters" in spring 2001, months before 9/11. These secrets were sent via e-mail to a pro-Taliban Web site. But in reporting the story, MSNBC.com ran an Associated Press story that failed to note Abu-Jihaad is…

The last time I wrote about Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, I described her as "ever-smiling." Scratch that. The Dem congresswoman from Ohio and Hillary co-chair just jabbed at MSNBC's Norah O'Donnell during a discussion of who is responsible for circulating the story about the Rezko trial: the media or the Clinton campaign.At one point, things got heated enough for Tubbs Jones to tell O'Donnell "…

The media have seemed to have forgotten what has made this country prosperous according to ABC's John Stossel. Stossel told an audience at the Heartland Institute's 2008 International Conference on Climate Change on March 4 in New York that the media propagate an anti-capitalist sentiment. "The socialist media - maybe they will just never get it," Stossel said. "Their world view is anti-…

Markos "Kos" Moulitsas has bought into the latest loopy conspiracy theory spinning around the left-wing Web.: that the Hillary Clinton campaign deliberately darkened a photo of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) to make him appear darker in skin tone than he actually is. But as Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs points out Markos and other ...morons are hyperventilating over videos they are…

Unfortunately, it is not what you thinkSorely DispleasedIt seems it all depends on who is doing the asking. ABC News spent a good portion of last week's morning programming in deep prostration and self-analysis in response to criticism that their journalistic presentation suffered from partiality.Could it be? Had we at the Media Research Center (MRC) -- after twenty-one years of protracted press…

Microsoft is taking all of that unnecessary thinking out of the process by pre-chewing your news and spitting it on your plate. The software giant is developing a new kind of news-aggregator that doesn't just collect news; it determines news stories' ideological bias and “emotional charge.” No longer will you need to wonder if Maureen Dowd has a liberal bias or if NPR injects “emotional charge”…

Philip Bennett, the Washington Post’s managing editor, paid a visit to the University of California, Irvine for a little chat earlier this week. During his comments on the subject of religion and politics, Bennett claimed that the MSM should hire more Muslims because the media has too many misconceptions about Islam. Bennett told the UCI audience, "At the Post I want more Muslim readers and I…

Unless you were paying very close attention you likely missed the change in a recent Politico headline from "Obama support soft among Catholics" to "Obama slow to gain among Catholics". The change itself may seem innocent enough until you learn that it was done in response to the furiously angry efforts by the Obama campaign to change the perception of Politico readers in advance of yesterday's…

Update below.Neither the Seattle Times nor the Seattle Post-Intelligencer are high on your average conservative's daily to-read list, but at least the latter is not gun-shy about calling recent suspected Earth Liberation Front (ELF) arsons acts of eco-terrorism. The Times opted for "radical environmentalists" to tag ELF even though it's pretty clear that investigators clearly think the Street of…

A pricey Seattle suburb appears to be the recent target of arson at the hands of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), a radical environmentalist group that destroys property in the name of protecting the earth. In other words, ELF is an eco-terrorist organization.Yet when covering the story, Seattle Times reporter Peyton Whitely refused to use any such label for the ELF. The Seattle Post-…