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AP's Tea Party News Theme: 'Fringe Groups, Extremists, or Infiltrators
The tea-party headline at the bottom of the screen early this morning on the local D.C. CBS affiliate WUSA said this: "Tea Party Leaders Anxious About Extremists." The same headline graced an Associated Press story this morning. The theme of the day isn't the burdensome growth of government. It's media bias, piled upon media bias, as AP's David Lieb began: Organizers of tax-day tea parties are…
How AP Feels About Today's Tea Party Gatherings
This is sooooo predictable. An unbylined Associated Press item on today's Tea Party Express tour wrap-up in Washington uses a word that the wire service almost never (if not absolutely never) applies to truly violent leftist groups. The Google page carrying the AP report also has an interesting lead "Related article." Here's the brief AP item (produced in full for fair use and discussion…
Tax Day Open Thread
Happy Tax Day, NBers!Who's attending a Tea Party rally today? Did everyone get their forms in on time? How about some tax-themed discussion and debate.
National Enquirer's Edwards Scoops 'Did Not Even Make the Top 10' on P
Los Angeles Times media reporter James Rainey discovered the Pulitzer Prize jurors weren't going to touch the National Enquirer with a ten-foot pole over their expose of John Edwards: One juror told me that, among that competition, the Enquirer's stories about Edwards did not even make the top 10. The tabloid had first revealed Edwards' relationship with his campaign videographer, Rielle Hunter,…
Procrastination? Columbia Journalism Review Finds Flaws with '60 Minut
Well, it only took them nearly a year to tackle this breakdown journalistic ethics, but the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) took on a CBS "60 Minutes" segment that aired back in May 2009. Nonetheless, an analysis by Martha M. Hamilton posted on the CJR Web site on April 14 found several flaws with a May 3, 2009, segment (critiqued by the Business & Media Institute on May 4, 2009). According…
'60 Minutes' Hit Job on Chevron Flawed, Journalism Review Admits
Pelley's so-called investigation of oil companies alleged pollution in Ecuadorian rainforest 'an exercise in innuendo.'
CBS Gives Tea Partiers Top Billing, But Sees 'Inconsistency' in the FN
“A CBS News/New York Times poll out tonight finds 18 percent of Americans support the movement,” Katie Couric announced at the top of Wednesday's CBS Evening News as the newscast provided a surprisingly neutral summary of the findings in the new survey, though reporter Dean Reynolds couldn't resist asserting “there is some inconsistency in the Tea Party viewpoints. For example, for all their…
If Schultz So Bent Out Of Shape About Obama-Hitler Images
Ed Schultz brags that he would have the "courage" to confront anyone putting a Hitler mustache on Barack Obama . . . So what of the innumerable occasions on which George W. was portrayed as a Nazi? Did Ed ever utter a peep of protest? Or is he OK with Republican presidents being portrayed as mega-mass murderers?Schultz made his macho claim on his MSNBC show this evening, in a clip from an…
Maher Insults Palin and Bachmann as MILFs: Morons I'd Like To Forget
Bill Maher and Chris Matthews, on Wednesday's Hardball, denigrated Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann as merely "attractive" women with very little smarts with the HBO host even going as far to use a vulgar euphemism to describe them as he claimed: "They're attractive especially to the Republican Party, which is not known as a party that really does well with the opposite sex. Usually they're…
MSNBC: 'Offensive' Tea Party Sign Has the Word 'LOVE' & Heart Symbol
At the top of the 3PM ET hour on MSNBC, anchor Peter Alexander reported on a Tea Party event being held in Boston and grilled conservative author Kevin Jackson on "the fringe elements who show up for these rallies. Some in the past have had offensive signs and rhetoric." As Alexander spoke a large sign from the Boston rally appeared on screen, displaying the word 'LOVE' and a heart symbol.
MSNBC's Mike Barnicle Smears John McCain: More Afraid of J.D. Hayworth
During a discussion of John McCain's drift rightward on Wednesday's Morning Joe, MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle smeared the Arizona Senator as more scared of Republican primary challenger J.D. Hayworth than he was of his Vietnamese torturers. Barnicle mocked, "The ultimate sadness is that, here, in the 21st century, running for re-election, he shows more fear of J.D. Hayworth than he showed…
NYT's Leonhardt Dismisses How Almost Half Pay No Income Tax, Calls For
In his Wednesday Business Day column, David Leonhardt, the New York Times's conscience on economic matters, defended the current skewed tax system, in which almost half of U.S. households paid no income taxes last year, and even argued that those now paying the highest rates should be paying even more: "Behind The 47% Talking Point." Leonhardt never addressed the underlying point of conservative…