Latest Blogs

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…

No retraction from ABC, NBC on grossly inflated shooting number.

Reacting to news that Texas conservatives Pete Sessions (R) and Jeb Hensarling (R) would not challenge Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) for House Majority Leader, MSNBC’s Chuck Todd felt compelled to rip the Tea Party for their supposed lack of leadership. According to The Daily Rundown host, Tea Party conservatives “will blind quote ‘leadership’ to death. They love to complain, moan, gripe, you know…

On Friday, CBS This Morning was the only one of the Big Three network morning shows to cover Hillary Clinton's testy Thursday exchange with NPR host Terry Gross over Clinton's shifting position on gay marriage. Neither NBC's Today nor ABC's Good Morning America bothered to mention the unflattering incident for the potential 2016 presidential candidate. [Listen to the audio or watch the video…

Well this is a pleasant surprise: the media incorrectly depict fathers, according to today’s dads – and, for once, the media agree. Just in time for Father’s Day, soap brand Dove hired Edelman Berland to survey 1,000 dads for Dove Men+Care. The dads challenged the media’s representation of fathers – with 80 percent agreeing the media fail to portray fathers roles accurately. When asked what…

Officials inside the Mormon Church have chosen to expel two activists from its ranks “One who is pushing for women priests. The other targeted for questioning church doctrine” and ABC’s Good Morning America did it's best to hype the supposed “controversy inside the Mormon Church.” On Friday, June 13, ABC’s Mara Schiavocampo promoted how “It's a shocking move by the Church of Jesus Christ of…

June 12 was former President George H.W. Bush’s 90th birthday and comedian Conan O’Brien used the occasion to mock President Obama.  Each year, H.W. Bush goes skydiving to celebrate his birthday and Conan joked “George HW Bush turned 90 and celebrated by skydiving. So, if you include Obama there were two presidents in free fall today.” [See video below.] 

In a brief Thursday post on the Atlantic’s website, "reform conservative" pundit David Frum cited Eric Cantor’s primary loss to Dave Brat as further evidence that “Republican leaders” need to emerge to confront the “the destructive leadership of fanatics (and the cynics who make their living by duping fanatics)." He cited Tony Blair as a model, someone " who revived his party by standing up…

Even though Hillary Clinton has not yet announced her presidential ambitions for 2016, she is still the subject of many online postings -- some of which are flattering, while others are ... not so much. On Thursday, the former secretary of state's memoir, Hard Choices, became the first entry in MSNBC's new book club, which led many posters to call the group a Hillary Clinton “fan club”…

On Tuesday, the Associated Press carried a regional story about the status of North Dakota's planting season. Readers will be pleased to know that 93 percent, 78 percent, and 92 percent of the state's wheat, potato and corn crops have been planted. Of course, farm news is important in the Roughrider State. But so is the latest information on its stratospheric economic growth, as well as…

Thursday's World News on ABC led with the rapid advance of an Islamist group into the heart of Iraq, but glossed over how correspondent Jonathan Karl grilled outgoing White House Press Secretary Jay Carney over how this development casts doubt on two of President Obama's supposed "top foreign policy accomplishments: ending the war in Iraq and decimating and destroying core al-Qaeda." Terry…

All three major broadcast networks devoted stories to the opening of the World Cup today in Rio de Janeiro, but ABC's business interests arguably got in the way of objective reporting. ABC and her sister ESPN networks are, after all the exclusive "media rights licensees" to carry World Cup matches in the United States. Reporting from Rio, ABC's Paula Faris devoted just one fleeting reference…

NPR star Terry Gross has been an aggressive defender of Hillary Clinton on her Fresh Air show on the taxpayer-funded airwaves. So it was a bit shocking to witness her pressing and pounding the former First Lady and Secretary of State for her shifting stands on gay issues in the second half of the 44-minute interview. Buzzfeed’s LGBT-beat reporter Chris Geidner counted ten times Gross…