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In the days leading up to the GOP primary in South Carolina, all three networks have aggressively attacked the state and its supposedly "dirty," "nasty," "notorious" politics. Echoing many other journalists, CBS's Jan Crawford warned on January 12: "Down here in South Carolina, the weather is warm, that tea is cold, and the politics can get down right dirty." On January 15, Chris Matthews…

With public attention focused on the GOP primaries, the White House quietly promoted another self-dealing lobbyist to serve as President Obama's top domestic policy adviser. Promises? What broken promises? Cecilia Munoz, the current director of intergovernmental affairs at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., will now serve as head of the Domestic Policy Council. She'll wield heightened influence at Obama…

New York Times sports columnist Harvey Araton issued a snotty broadside (“Curtain Closes on Tebow’s Season, but His Sideshow Goes On") against Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow, whose religious displays, unconventional style, and clutch performances have divided fans and popular culture. Araton went beyond admitting discomfort at Tebow’s overt religiosity to begrudge the quarterback for a…

MSNBC resident Victorian gent Rachel Maddow must have felt so dutiful for correcting an inaccurate statement by one of her guests. Which made it all the more amusing that Maddow during the same show perpetuated a hoary media myth created two decades ago. (video after page break)

Update (17:05 EST): Williams tweets in protest: "Not once did I say GOP voters are racists" and has asked that I correct this post accordingly. I stand by my assertion given the context wherein Williams was describing why he believes Palmetto State Republicans, despite their reticence about Romney's Mormonism, could vote for Romney, whom they consider most likely to beat Obama in the November…

Appearing on Monday's NBC Today to discuss Golden Globe wins for several of his films, producer Harvey Weinstein was particularly proud of the Margaret Thatcher biopic, "The Iron Lady," selectively praising the former British prime minister: "...you see the values that Margaret Thatcher espouses....she was a social progressive, she was pro-choice...pro-gay, pro, you know, health service…

In the annals of fawning coverage of scandal-plagued Democrats, Michael Biesecker's Saturday morning report on John Edwards's illness and its effect on his upcoming trail on campaign finance violations surely must be among the worst. Biesecker missed at least a half-dozen natural opportunities to tag Edwards as a Democrat, finally doing so in cryptic fashion in his 15th of 17 paragraphs. He…

While the news media has a professional "obligation to get it right," liberal network news anchor last week set out to "purposefully" take Mitt Romney's "fire people" comment out of context, Fox News host Sean Hannity complained on his January 13 program. But it's not only "purposeful distortion" but "purposeful character assassination" by the liberal media added NewsBusters publisher Brent…

At the top of the 8 a.m. ET hour of NBC's Today on Monday, fill-in news anchor Tamron Hall promoted a fake campaign attack ad created by comedian Stephen Colbert which argues that if Mitt Romney believes corporations are people, "Then Mitt Romney is a serial killer. He's Mitt the Ripper." The ad follows with a woman screaming. [Audio available here] Hall explained to viewers: "Colbert is…

There was a fascinating exchange last week between Melissa Cohlmia, spokesman for Koch Industries, and New York Times public editor (or ombudsman) Arthur Brisbane. Koch Industries, which engages in arts philanthropy and conservative-libertarian causes, is a target of obsession and hostility both by left-wingers and reporters and writers for the New York Times, as Times Watch has shown. While…

CBS’s Bob Schieffer decided his viewers needed a special warning about how far out of the mainstream an upcoming guest dwells, plugging at the top of Sunday’s Face the Nation how he’d have as guests Republican presidential candidates Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich – and then: “for context on how it’s going, we’ll bring in South Carolina’s very conservative Senator, Jim DeMint.”

Hip-hop millionaire Russell Simmons and MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan aren't only outspoken supporters of the Occupy movement. On the occasion of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the pair published an article at the Huffington Post claiming that our decades-old war on drugs is a racist conspiracy designed to unfairly incarcerate blacks to profit government agencies and corporate America:

Tuning in Morning Joe today, I half expected to discover on the set some professional mourners imported from North Korea, keening and crying over the political demise of Jon Huntsman. Huntsman had had the Morning Joe crowd from hello.  The overwhelming winner of the bien-pensant MSM primary was amazingly popular—except with actual Republican voters, who didn't dig his moderate positioning…

On Saturday, the NPR-distributed show On The Media recycled “The Story That Continues to Dog Romney" – a 1983 anecdote where Mitt Romney strapped his Irish setter Seamus to the top of his car in a carrier on a trip to Canada. Somehow, On The Media host Bob Garfield found it wry to compare Romney to Michael Vick, the NFL quarterback who pled guilty to hanging or drowning six to eight dogs. “So…