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Immediately after Paul Ryan concluded his acceptance speech for the Republican Party's vice presidential nomination on Wednesday, the media sought ways to tear down the Wisconsin Congressman's indictment of the failures of the Obama administration. In particular, networks and newspapers attempted to knock down Ryan's accurate claim that President Obama promised to keep open a GM plant that closed…

You'd think an image of a man violently covering a frightened woman's mouth, accompanied with the words, "He’s decided to become a father…right-wing Republicans want to make sure he does", would be considered mildly extreme, right? Not extreme enough for Huffington Post contributor and pro-Obama blogger, Erin Kotecki Vest, who posted the image to her Facebook page.

Last night, at 8:38 p.m. Eastern, Ted and Pat Oparowski -- who attended church with Mitt Romney in the late 1970s -- shared their heartwarming story of how Mitt Romney took time out of his busy schedule to visit their cancer-stricken son David and to help him settle his affair and write his will when it was apparent the cancer would take his life. Both CNN and Fox News Channel carried the…

The latest entry in the media's obsession with picayune and partisan "fact-checking" of the Republican National Convention: New York Times reporter Michael Cooper's Friday "Check Point," "Facts Take a Beating In Acceptance Speeches." The original web headline was ridiculously partisan for a news story: "Ryan's Speech Contained a Litany of Falsehoods." Representative Paul D. Ryan used his…

As the presidential campaign season has moved along, veteran Democratic strategist-turned MSNBC host Chris Matthews has become increasingly vocal in expressing his hatred for Republicans and adoration for President Barack Obama. That tension must be rubbing off on his staff members since one of them, a producer, is now accused of assaulting two men at the Republican National Convention last night…

New York Times "TV Watch" columnist Alessandra Stanley focused Friday on MSNBC's embarrassingly partisan coverage of the Republican National Convention and tried to contrast it with the struggle of NBC's more objective reporters to remain above the fray: "MSNBC, Arch Counterprogramming to Fox." The online head was more interesting: "How MSNBC Became Fox’s Liberal Evil Twin." Stanley even…

The network morning shows on Friday slammed conservative actor Clint Eastwood's "bizarre," "rambling" endorsement of Mitt Romney at the Republican National Convention. Good Morning America, CBS This Morning and NBC's Today dissected the speech in 11 out of 12 segments about the convention. GMA guest host Amy Robach mocked, "The good, the bad and the ugly." She hyperbolically added, "Did…

Once again the folks at NBC News have "curated some of the notable speeches" from a night at the GOP convention. As I noted here and here, NBC left out some compelling speeches by minority politicians who started out in life as Democrats. This time, among the speeches that didn't make the cut was that of Tom Stemberg, the founder of Staples. Staples is one of the wildest success stories of Bain…

If a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged, you might say that James Taranto became solidly conservative when his free speech was mugged by liberals. Taranto is the author of the inimitable Best of the Web Today column at the online edition of the Wall Street Journal.  In a wide-ranging interview with NewsBusters at the RNC yesterday, Taranto—asked how he became a conservative—…

Once again MSNBC desperately looked for a way to inject race into Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign.  Following his convention speech, Ed Schultz felt that Governor Romney’s comments on American exceptionalism was a "line to the birthers tonight." Schultz’s specific critique came after Mr. Romney said, "when the world needs someone to do the really big stuff, you need an American."…

We have yet another addition to the pro-gay, anti-Christian genre so popular on TV these days. Apparently NBC is looking to cash in on the falsehood that “abnormal is the new normal” with a series focused on a gay couple’s quest to have a child via a surrogate mother. In “The New Normal,” Bryan and David, a gay couple in a committed partnership, turn to surrogacy because they “can’t have…

Over the past several years, even as the circulation and influence of traditional media has declined, there has been an explosion in the numbers of journalists producing sois-disant "fact-checking" pieces. As the god that failed (the media) has become tarnished, a new one ("fact-checking") has been set up. Unfortunately, as our friends at IBD note today, such attempts to hold politicians…

Appearing toward the end of Thursday night's MSNBC live coverage of the Republican National Convention, Time magazine's Mark Halperin defended President Barack Obama's infamous "You didn't build that" gaffe, as he portrayed President Obama as attempting to defend himself from false accusations by the GOP. After host Chris Matthews asserted a bit past 12:35 a.m. that Obama had not really…

Just moments after Mitt Romney finished his acceptance speech, NBC’s Tom Brokaw and Chuck Todd painted the GOP nominee as a backwards-looking candidate who was going back to the GOP’s “extreme” and less “inclusive” past. On NBC’s live coverage of Thursday’s Republican National Convention, Brokaw recalled covering Romney’s father and observed that while George Romney “fought” to make the GOP…