NYT Hails Snopes' Fake-News Fact-Checking, Hits Doubting Conservatives

Snopes is having its time in the spotlight in Monday’s New York Times, as reporter David Streitfeld pumped up the famous “fact-checking” website on the front of Business Day. Snopes’ profile is rising with its new relationship with Facebook, but as the site has waded more into politics, it’s getting a liberal reputation and allegations of hypocrisy have been raised. But Streitfeld dismissed any…
Clay Waters
December 27th, 2016 9:12 AM

After Trump Tweet, Bitter Silver Posts Nuclear Survival Electoral Map

Nate Silver has been the establishment press's designated polling hero since 2008, when he correctly predicted the outcome of that year's presidential contest in 49 of 50 states. He also had a great year in 2012, predicting all 50 states' presidential preference results. This year's election? Not so much. Donald Trump won, and Silver is not handling it well. In fact, he's violated one of the…
Tom Blumer
December 26th, 2016 10:46 PM

Maddow Pessimistic for Media, Says It May 'Crumble' Under Trump

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow made the rounds on a few shows last week where she expressed her worry that a Trump administration will have a serious and negative impact on the profession of “journalism” -- it may "crumble" -- and that “just got different” under the incoming administration. Last week Maddow was on NBC's Late Night with host Seth Meyers, who asked her if liberals had any reasons to be…
Melissa Mullins
December 26th, 2016 6:05 PM

HuffPost Warns: Trump Voters Love Planned Parenthood?

Nobody expects objectivity from The Huffington Post – not after a presidential campaign in which every Trump story carried a nasty “disclaimer” that Trump “regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther.” But now they’re warning Trump not to touch federal subsidies for Planned Parenthood’s abortion business. “Senior politics reporter…
Tim Graham
December 26th, 2016 1:38 PM

Lib Professor: Kristof Is Enabling Right’s ‘Anti-Intellectualism’

Aaron Hanlon thinks anti-conservative bias at colleges and universities is a molehill that a lot of people try to make into a mountain. To the dismay of Hanlon, a professor of English at Colby College, some of his fellow liberals are among those who, in his opinion, exaggerate the problem and thereby bolster the right’s case. Last Thursday in The New Republic, Hanlon went after New York Times…
Tom Johnson
December 26th, 2016 1:30 PM

NatGeo Channel to Promote Naming Hawaiian 'Hope' Fish After Obama

Here’s another little piece of evidence that the Murdoch family buying the National Geographic Channel isn’t turning it into a right-wing property.  A forthcoming special Sea of Hope – debuting January 15 – includes footage of President Obama visiting a Hawaiian island to meet with “legendary scientist” Sylvia Earle as she shows him a new tropical fish species named after him.
Tim Graham
December 26th, 2016 7:03 AM

Dowd's Christmas Explanation: Mary, Joseph Were 'Immigrants, Refugees'

The latest media person to fail to think and count to ten before hitting the "Tweet" button is Matthew Dowd. Once a Democrat, Dowd came over to the Republican Party in 1999, and was George W. Bush's chief campaign strategist during the 2004 campaign. He became an independent in 2008 and is currently a Chief Political Analyst at ABC News. He also claims to be Catholic, but clearly has a…
Tom Blumer
December 25th, 2016 10:53 PM

WashPost Scandalized by Bias: A 'Giant TV Company' Helped Trump Win

Washington Post media reporter Paul Farhi dug into the Baltimore-based Sinclair Broadcast Group to warn of conservative pro-Trump bias. The headline at the top of the Style section front page was “How a giant TV company helped Donald Trump's campaign.” It’s nothing like giant TV companies like, say, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, or (“not for profit’’) PBS. But pro-Trump bias is offensive inside the Post…
Tim Graham
December 25th, 2016 9:25 PM

New York Times Wraps Up 2016 With Christmas Gifts for Democrats

Not even Christmas Day provided respite from New York Times bias: The Sunday Review was devoted to the Year in Pictures, and cast the just-concluded election as a clash of light vs. darkness. The front-page was wholly covered by a full-length photo of Donald Trump -- more accurately, Trump’s shadow -- in stark, Stygian darkness, while the back page featured a hopeful member of the Hillary…
Clay Waters
December 25th, 2016 8:15 PM

Media Bias on Communism, 25 Years After USSR’s Demise

Looking back at the media’s track record on communism, one sees a press that was too willing to act as a mouthpiece for the world’s worst dictatorships, and too accepting of the perverse claim that communism meant safety and security for its people.
Rich Noyes
December 25th, 2016 9:52 AM

Fox's Carlson Investigates CNN Host's Spreading a YouTube Hoax

On Thursday's Tucker Carlson Tonight, Fox News host Tucker Carlson decried CNN Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter for insisting on his October 30 show that you should "triple check before you share" and then spreading on Twitter a YouTube hoax where prankster Adam Saleh claimed he was being thrown off a Delta Airlines flight merely for speaking Arabic. The airline and other passengers strongly…
Tim Graham
December 25th, 2016 8:28 AM

WashPost Twice Promotes Drag Queen Quartet Mocking Christmas, Trump

The Washington Post easily proves it's a secular liberal newspaper at Christmas time. On Friday, the Post promoted a "dragapella" quartet mocking Christmas (and the incoming administration) in two different sections of the paper, in the Style section and in the Weekend tabloid. In Style, theatre critic Celia Wren hailed the Kinsey Sicks and their show "Oy Vey in a Manger!" at the D.C. Jewish…
Tim Graham
December 25th, 2016 8:00 AM

Talk Radio Thriving as Rush Signs New Contract That Shows Dominance

Back there in the mists of time -- that would be last month -- I wrote about The Attacks on Conservative Talk Radio.  Not for the first time, what has become an institution of American life was under attack. This time, however, the attackers (Oliver Darcy and Pamela Engel writing in Business Insider) were citing - approvingly - President Obama’s blame of talk radio for the rise of Donald Trump…

Jeffrey Lord
December 24th, 2016 8:32 PM

ESPN’s Patriotism-Phobic Bryant: ‘More Police...Obedience on Game Day'

ESPN's Howard Bryant capped off a year of flag-fear and injection of racial politics into sports with his column in the magazine’s last issue of 2016: “Fight of Our Times – In a year of great victory and great unrest, the legacy of Muhammad Ali has never felt more vital. But will athletes continue to rise up in 2017?” Bryant is known for his BLM-style rants against the alleged epidemic of racist…
Clay Waters
December 24th, 2016 7:49 PM