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With the founder of the Daily Kos deliberately trying to tie Sarah Palin's target list to yesterday's shooting in Tucson, perhaps it's time Markos Moulitsas took this opportunity to look at his own people in regards to using incendiary rhetoric.  Markos took the time to send a message to his followers yesterday tweeting, “Mission accomplished, Sarah Palin”.  But if target lists are considered…

Washington Post media reporter Paul Farhi was complete enough in his reporting on the internal NPR review of the Juan Williams firing on Saturday that he included financial numbers that NPR released on the bonuses of NPR CEO Vivian Schiller. The decision to cancel her bonus over that Fox-loathing fiasco was a six-figure decision: According to tax records released by NPR on Friday, Schiller…

Talk about incendiary and toxic talk. In Friday’s Washington Post, business section columnist Steven Pearlstein proclaimed that “what's particularly noteworthy about” congressional Republican “fixation with ‘job killing’” Democratic policies, such as Obamacare, “is that it stands in such contrast to the complete lack of concern about policies that kill people rather than jobs.” Pearlstein, a…

As we move into the second day following the horrendous attack on innocent citizens in Tucson, Arizona, the media's blame game continues. Although the New York Times editorial board stopped short of claiming Republicans and the Tea Party were responsible for inciting Jared Lee Loughner to commit this heinous crime, the Gray Lady made it clear it feels the Right are the cause of a "gale of…

Talk about bullish consensus, the entire panel on this weekend's "Chris Matthews Show" felt that President Obama was going to be a big winner in the first quarter of this year making him the proverbial comeback kid. Alex Wagner of Politics Daily went so far as to predict, "Obama’s going to be flying on angels wings two feet off the ground" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

As NewsBusters has been reporting, the Gabrielle Giffords shooting blame game has been in full swing since the moment shots were fired in Tucson Saturday. With this in mind, Howard Kurtz invited conservative talk radio host Steve Malzberg and Mediaite editor-at-large Rachel Sklar on Sunday's "Reliable Sources" to fight over whether all the finger-pointing at right-wing figures like Sarah…

"Never let the facts get in the way of a good story" must be the motto at Reuters, or at least of the wire service's Richard Cowan, three other contributors, and Editor Jackie Frank. Cowan's late Sunday afternoon dispatch (HT to an e-mailer) is caricature-driven collection of cliches, half-truth, outright myths, and totally predictable oversights. There's the racial slurs before the heath…

Since making his claim Saturday that the Tucson shootings were caused by "vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business," Pima County Arizona Sheriff Clarence Dupnik has become a media darling being regularly quoted by press outlets from coast to coast. On Sunday, during strong questioning from Fox News's Megyn Kelly,…

A recurring feature in the Washington Post's weekly Outlook section is a column devoted to "Five myths about" a particular topic. The feature for January 9 -- "5 myths about why the South seceded" -- happened to address a timely historical topic considering this year marks the sesquicentennial of the beginning of the U.S. Civil War. Yet the author, sociologist James W. Loewen, couldn't…

“The shooter’s motivation is still unknown,” Katie Couric announced as she anchored Saturday’s CBS Evening News, but that didn’t deter CBS, nor CNN, NBC and ABC on Saturday night and into Sunday morning from forwarding attempts to blame Sarah Palin and, by implication, the Tea Party, for the Tucson shooting. “Giffords was one of 20 Democrats whose districts were lit up in cross hairs on a…

24 hours after the senseless killings in Tucson, Arizona, liberal media members are still convinced Jared Lee Loughner was somehow motivated by inflammatory comments he recently heard or read. Despite there still being absolutely no evidence that this is the case, CBS's Bob Schieffer concluded Sunday's "Face the Nation" making the same silly point (video follows with transcript and commentary…

Leave it up to the Chicago Sun Times editorial page to take opportunistic privileges with the Arizona Shooting tragedy and post a shamefully rambling and incoherent smear against the right. With the claim that “we cannot walk away from this one” the newspaper rails against the tone of America’s political rhetoric, to end the fear-mongering and “quit the demonizing”. And then in an incredibly…

A conservative writer likely unknown to most NewsBusters readers scolded Politico's Roger Simon Sunday for trying to connect Sarah Palin to yesterday's shootings in Tucson, Arizona. Surrounded by liberals on CNN's "Reliable Sources," Debra Saunders of the San Francisco Chronicle said what would be obvious to most journalists if they weren't always so quick to tie extreme acts of violence…

 Appearing as a guest on Saturday’s special edition of Countdown on MSNBC, Washington Post associate editor Eugene Robinson joined host Keith Olbermann in linking the violent attack on Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords to political rhetoric, presumably by conservatives, and suggested that such public figures must be careful to avoid inciting mentally disturbed individuals.  Moments…