Washington Post

The Washington Post today called on Gov. Martin O'Malley (D-Md.) to push for and Maryland legislators to pass a plastic bag tax patterned after the District of Columbia's 5-cent-per-bag levy.The Post couched the need for the tax in terms of safeguarding the health of the Chesapeake Bay -- much as the D.C. bag tax is purportedly earmarked for cleanup of the Anacostia River.But curiously enough,…

Howell Raines lost his executive editor’s job at The New York Times for promoting the career of Jayson Blair, a black drug addict and fantasist who invented entire stories describing the hills of West Virginia from a saloon down the street in New York. But somehow Raines still imagines himself a media bigfoot who can pronounce on the State of Journalism, a one-man Pulitzer Prize panel. This is a…

Eternally optimistic New York Times pro-Obama-care reporter David Herszenhorn's Tuesday morning post managed to make the desperate proposal by House Democrats to pass a massive federal expansion of health care entitlement spending without actually voting on the legislation sound like an innocuous procedural wrinkle: “Passing Health Care Legislation, Tucked in a Rule.”According to a plan by…

Apparently, March 15 was “get Beck” day at the Washington Post. Columnist Howard Kurtz criticized Fox News’ Glenn Beck for “dividing” Fox. He pointed out that companies have boycotted the show, and noted all the controversial things that Beck has said. Yes, Beck is wildly successful, “But that growth has come at a price, at least for those at Fox who believe that Beck is beginning to define their…

Last week, the Culture & Media Institute published a study of The Washington Post's coverage of the legalization of same-sex marriage in the District of Columbia. CMI found overwhelming bias in the Post's reporting during the seven days after gay couples could begin applying for marriage licenses. The celebratory tone of many of the articles was enough to merit charges of bias, but CMI had…

Monday’s Washington Post should be retitled Washington Happy Talk. Topping the right side of the page is the headline "Democrats upbeat on health-care bill" and below that, the headline "Obama priority shift could help his party." This is quite a shift from the gloom-and-doom days of President Bush. The first story, by Post reporter Dan Eggen, noted the obvious point that votes are still lacking…

Two prominent current and former Democrat pollsters are accusing media of deceiving themselves about healthcare reform being popular."Nothing has been more disconcerting than to watch Democratic politicians and their media supporters deceive themselves into believing that the public favors the Democrats' current health-care plan."So wrote Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen in an op-ed published at the…

Yesterday, Jim Taranto at the Wall Street Journal's indispensable Best of the Web took note of a report by the Washington Post's V. Dion Hayes about the state of the employment market in DC, Maryland, and Virginia, and summarized its findings thusly: So what looks to the Post like good news that looks like bad news is actually bad news that looks like good news. Even that assessment turns out to…

When former New York Times editor Howell Raines decided to attack the Fox News Channel and blame the news outlet for President Barack Obama's shortcomings, there was bound to be a response. And delivering that response was "The O'Reilly Factor" host Bill O'Reilly, who called his show "the signature broadcast" of the network. O'Reilly dismissed Raines as a lunatic. However he was also critical of…

In seven days, the Washington Post: Ran 11 articles related to D.C.'s new law allowing same-sex marriage. Devoted 543 inches of column space to the ruling - equal to nearly four full pages. Printed 14 photos of gay celebrations, including a prominent one of two men kissing. Quoted supporters 11 times more often than opponents - 67 to 6. Repeatedly compared gay marriage…

Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s longtime minister and permanent embarrassment, preached in Washington on Wednesday, reported  Hamil Harris of The Washington Post. (It was nowhere to be found in my Thursday paper.) Harris suggested Wright's nastiest words were saved for Fox News, which wanted to ruin his granddaughters. It sounded a little like paranoid Ross Perot in 1992. The anti-Obama…

The sour economy has forced many Americans to tighten belts, and everyday Americans expect the same from their government. But that's practically unconscionable to the Washington Post as witnessed by its March 10 article, "Va.budget plan would shrink general spending to 2006 levels."* Here's how Post staffers Rosalind Helderman and Fredrick Kunkle launched into their lament of the pending budget…

Call it a conflict of interest or what you will - but how should The Washington Post handle formal inquiries into its business practices as it pertains to news coverage? In July 2009, when the Post got in embroiled in controversy over its own pay-for-play scandal, the Post's media reporter Howard Kurtz took on the newspaper's publisher Katharine Weymouth. However, as the March 8 issue of Barron'…

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) has caused students across the Old Dominion to "rise up for gay rights,"* reporters Daniel de Vise and Rosalind Helderman insisted on the March 9 Metro section front page of the Washington Post.Helderman and de Vise failed to consider the liberal leanings of the protesters, tagging the demonstrators in the lead paragraph as mere "campus activists" who…