USA Today

Aamer Madhani at USA Today took the easy way out on Friday in covering the sharp increases in murders in many U.S. cities during the first half of this year. He quoted Milwaukee's police chief bemoaning "absurdly weak" gun laws. He noted that "the increased violence is disproportionately impacting poor and predominantly African-American and Latino neighborhoods." He found a university prof to…

Reviewing Reagan: The Life, by historian H.W. Brands, USA Today White House reporter Gregory Korte recited tired anti-Reagan cliches favored by liberals as he complained about “some notable omissions” in the book. In his piece which appeared in the “Life” section of Thursday’s newspaper, Korte regretted that “Brands makes no mention of Reagan’s 1980 ‘states rights’ speech in Philadelphia, Miss.”…

The world's financial markets had a terrible Monday. The debt crisis in Greece (population: 11 million) has been dominating the headlines and the press's attention, while serious deterioration in China (population: 1.36 billion) is getting short shrift. It isn't just that the mainland Chinese stock market has broken the bear-market decline threshold of 20 percent in less than three weeks,…

On June 20, a rally in support of traditional marriage drew between 300,000 and 1 million people to Rome. No major news reported on the event, which is strange, considering how much they love reporting on marriage-centric marches. No one would accuse popular media outlets like USA Today, CNN, and ABC News of ignoring the gay marriage movement, or gays in general. They spent gallons of ink and…

While network correspondents like ABC’s Terry Moran singled out “an amazing admission from President Obama” that there is still no "complete strategy" to defeat or degrade ISIS, USA Today’s front page on Tuesday carried an upbeat headline in all caps: “OBAMA VOWS TO BOLSTER IRAQIS.”  The brief ten-paragraph front-pager by Kim Hjelmgaard and Jim Michaels never included a quote from Obama saying…

While even MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell worried on Thursday about the “headwinds facing Hillary Clinton” amid the ongoing e-mail and Clinton Foundation scandals, USA Today Washington bureau chief Susan Page reassured her liberal journalist colleague: “You know, it's certainly true she has had a load of trouble in the national press, but you look at her appearance yesterday in South Carolina and she…

On Wednesday, a federal grand jury indicted liberal activist and Florida postal worker Douglas Hughes on a total of six felony and misdemeanor charges in relation to his April 15 landing of gyropcopter on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol that, if convicted, could result in up to a nine-and-half-year prison sentence. When it came to the major broadcast networks covering this story on their…

“Dad, what’s ‘humor?’ “Well, it was a way of talking about things – mixing truth with absurdity or irony – that helped us navigate uncomfortable issues. It made people smile and laugh. They even allowed it in the media sometimes. But that was all long ago, before the Rise of the Perpetually Offended.” If you think that conversation is far-fetched, get a load of USA Today’s Ted Berg. Berg got…

Liberal media bias lives beyond the borders of the United States. As Michael Wolff noted in a front page article for Monday’s USA Today: “Many popular media notions of what a restless electorate is against (bankers, corporate power, tax dodgers, economic austerity) and what it is for (fundamental change, leveling the powerful, taxing the rich and big social program promises) came a cropper in the…

The National Rifle Association annual meeting in Nashville drew nasty coverage from Anita Wadhwani, who reports for the Tennessean and for USA Today. On Saturday, the local paper reported “At NRA, little love for media turnout.” The NRA’s not used to fair and balanced coverage. Wadwhani dramatically underscored their hostility on Monday with a story headlined “Big conventions, like NRA, can draw…

A Wednesday "Good Morning America" piece gave President Barack Obama an open mic to claim that, in ABC's words, "climate change became a personal issue for him when his older daughter Malia, now 16, was rushed to the emergency room with an asthma attack when she was just a toddler." Somehow, ABC managed to avoid another possible contributor — besides the obvious possibility that Malia developed…

One would think the editorial boards of the nations’ top newspapers – journalism’s brightest and best – wouldn't lightly throw around inflammatory language, slurs and insults. But it appears that an Indiana law protecting the religious freedom of businesses and individuals is so beyond the pale it had the journalistic high-priests at many of America’s top 20 papers sputtering “bigot,” “…

Earlier this evening, the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism issued its report on Rolling Stone Magazine's November "A Rape on Campus" story. The report follows up on the magazine's request of Columbia to conduct an independent review of how the disastrously false 9,000-word story made it through to publication. USA Today is reporting that for all the harsh criticism the piece's…