Latest Blogs

 From time to time, we at NewsBusters like to highlight things the media actually do right, and so, on this Flag Day, we tip our hats to the CBS Evening News, which two days ago closed its newscasts with a story on the 200th anniversary of Francis Scott Key's writing of the “Star-Spangled Banner." Reporter Jim Axelrod narrated a fitting tribute to the “flag and song together, forming the…

Jimmy Carter is not a saint. If you doubt that, read Steven Hayward’s The Real Jimmy Carter. But The New York Times never noticed that book. Last Sunday, they boosted Randall Balmer’s Carter book Redeemer, which pitches Carter metaphorically as...Christ-like. It’s bad enough that Balmer uses his book to claim nastily that the Religious Right was organized by the late Paul Weyrich around…

Newt Gingrich hasn’t been an elected official in more than fifteen years, but according to Mother Jones blogger Kevin Drum, Gingrich’s vitriolic approach to politics during his years in the House of Representatives remains influential via Fox News. (Even though Gingrich stars on CNN.) Piggybacking on an Andrew Sullivan blog post in which Sullivan alleged that watching Fox News was “like…

On Friday's NBC Nightly News, Brian Williams strongly hinted that the recent Islamist blitzkrieg in Iraq was completely former President Bush's fault: "Make no mistake: what's happening in Iraq right now is a direct outgrowth of the U.S. decision to invade the country over a decade ago." However, he glossed over the Obama administration's failure to negotiate a continued U.S. presence and…

He brands himself, ever so immodestly, as "America's Lawyer" -- though conservative Americans would be well advised to seek legal counsel elsewhere. More accurately, he is "Liberal Americans' Unhinged Barrister." Papantonio, who co-hosts the "Ring of Fire" radio show with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Sam Seder, gave a textbook example of why he such rebranding is necessary when he was more over…

You've got to hand it to Martin Crutsinger at the Associated Press. His Thursday writeup on May's disappointing retail sales result — a 0.3 percent increase compared to expectations of 0.4 percent to 0.6 percent — was infused with optimism. It's "unlikely to derail overall economic growth." There's been a "revival in consumer spending." We'll see "boosting incomes and supporting stronger…

Did you ever want to do a Bible study with Martin Bashir? I ask because a few days ago the former MSNBCer, who once fantasized on air about former Gov. Sarah Palin being forced to eat human excrement, shared his observation in a tweet about one way in which the president can give his Amen to a lament of the biblical King David.

On the June 13 edition of CNN Newsroom, Carol Costello and company defended Hillary Clinton from the media’s criticism of her interview with Terry Gross of NPR. John Avlon of The Daily Beast cheered that “you got a glimpse of authenticity from Hillary Clinton” in the exchange. Costello took a different route for defending Hillary [MP3 audio here; video below]:

UPDATE [06/16]: Monday's Today offered a correction on Trump's claim that Blair Kamin had been "fired" from the Chicago Tribune. At the top of the 8 a.m. ET hour, news anchor Natalie Morales explained: "Well, in fact, that critic, Pulitzer Prize winner Blair Kamin, has been with the Chicago Tribune for more than twenty years and also spent the 2013 academic year as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard."…

Apparently two years of Lois Lerner’s emails have been lost, according to the IRS. The disappearance of the emails caused House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp to blast: “The fact that I am just learning about this, over a year into the investigation, is completely unacceptable and now calls into question the credibility of the IRS’s response to Congressional inquiries. There needs…

The panelists of MSNBC’s Morning Joe got a little more than they were bargaining for when they brought Sen. John McCain on their June 13 program. With the Arizona Republican making the case that the Obama administration was leaving Iraq in a hostile situation in which all of America’s past sacrifices “will have been made in vain,” both host Mika Brzezinksi and Sam Stein of the Huffington…

As commencement season winds down, Samantha Reinis at Campus Reform reported that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology expunged God from its invocation on June 6 -- in the name of "inclusion." This decision came after an op-ed in the campus newspaper The Tech by graduate student Aaron Scheinburg, who argued the prayer should avoid religion. (?)

Do fathers matter? Are they anything more than the sperm donors and ATMs modern society tells them they are? Or the deadbeats, duds and doofusses presented in pop culture?  Dads get roughed up in the media. According to a survey of fathers, “Three quarters of dads say they are responsible for their child’s emotional well-being, while only 20% of dads see this role reflected in media.”

Some facts are too convenient for the media to check, or retract.  Earlier this week Newsbusters reported that the media hyped a statistic about school shootings that originated from Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun group “Everytown for Gun Safety.’ There have been, according to the widely reported stat, 74 school shootings since Sandy Hook. The media dutifully repeated the number until it was…