Ken Shepherd's blog

President Barack Obama will take to the podium in the White House press briefing room at 10:30 a.m. Eastern for a press conference. The occasion: today is the 100th day of his second term in office. We at NewsBusters will be watching and I'll be live-blogging the questions from reporters. Pardon my inaccuracies as I'll be transcribing on the fly.

In the comments section, leave some question that YOU would ask if you were in the room. Which questions should be asked but likely won't?

"Virginia's assault on abortion claims a victim," lamented the WashingtonPost.com headline for an April 28 editorial -- headlined "Virginia's assault on abortion" in the print edition -- savaging the new regulations on clinics in the Old Dominion.

It seems the Post, generally no opponent of government regulation, is staunchly pro-free enterprise when the business in question is killing unborn children for a fee. Here's how the liberal editorial board began its overwrought piece:

Every now and then a liberal newspaper can pleasantly surprise us. Today is one of those days, although as I explain later, our praise is qualified. In a 27-paragraph story in Monday's edition, staffers Sandhya Somashekhar and Lena Sun noted a recent sting video by pro-life group Live Action wherein Washington, D.C. abortionist Cesare Santangelo admitted that "in the unlikely event that an abortion resulted in a live birth, 'we wouldn't help it.'"

"[T]echnically, you know, legally, we would be obligated to help it, you know, to survive, but it probably wouldn't," Santangelo told the 24-week pregnant woman in the Live Action video. In a subsequent interview with the Post, Santangelo sought to spin what folks could see on the hidden camera expose.

"The more we learn of Boston bombers the more they seem like bumblers. And there's the rub: any idiot can terrorize, doesn't require genius."

Thus tweeted The Atlantic's Garance Franke-Ruta earlier this morning. While some followers agreed, others shot back that it was a woefully inaccurate take, to say the least.

"After an extraordinarily productive two years in which Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley muscled through legislation on several top priorities — including same-sex marriage,gun control, transportation funding and repealing the death penalty — the question is: What, if anything, is there left for him to do before leaving office?"

That's how Washington Post staffer John Wagner opened his Metro section front-page April 22 story "O'Malley plans for rest of term -- and beyond." Nowhere in his 24-paragraph story did Wagner -- no stranger to NewsBusters criticism by the way -- cite any conservative or Republican critics of the liberal Democratic governor, a prospective 2016 presidential contender.

When it comes to the failure of the Democratic gun control package in the U.S. Senate earlier this week, "[t]he media [have been] amplifying... with less subtlety" President Obama's gripes about the power of the NRA and a minority in the Senate supposedly scuttling the will of the American people on background checks, the Wall Street Journal editorial board noted today. But the truth of the matter, the board explained, is that Democrats have only themselves, and more specifically President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, to blame.

The Journal editorial board explained how "[t]he White House demanded, and Mr. Reid agreed, that Congress should try to pass the [Manchin-Toomey background check] amendment without" the benefit of 30 hours of floor debate which "would have meant inspecting the details" of the legislation and "opened up the bill to pro-gun amendments that were likely to pass." A simple majority was needed for such a debate, the Journal notes, a threshold they could have cleared as Reid had 54 votes for his cloture motion. So why did Reid not go that route? Because it would "have boxed Mr. Reid into the embarrassing spectacle of having to later scotch a final bill because it also contained provisions that the White House loathes," the Journal argued, adding (emphases mine):

The liberal media love to chastise Republicans for  writing off minorities and urban voters, insisting that the GOP is becoming a regional and largely rural party. But that concern trolling doesn't cut both ways. The liberal media never seem to care that Democrats are losing rural, blue collar workers or that the party's failure to be competitive in the rural heartland is an indictment of their ability to bring the country together.

This double standard was well illustrated in today's Metro section front page in the Washington Post headlined "McAuliffe to pass up Shad Planking: Democrat won't angle for votes at this year's ritual on the James River." Post reporter Ben Pershing devoted 24 paragraphs to explain and allow Democrats to defend their lack of resources devoted to a decades-long bipartisan tradition in the Old Dominion (emphasis mine):

"[I]n the end, Kermit Gosnell’s house of horrors exposed more than the grim reality of late-term abortion. It also revealed what happens when journalists act as though 'sacred cows' are more important to us than our sacred duty to follow the story wherever it leads, irrespective of how uncomfortable it makes us -- and regardless of the political fallout. Even in these polarized times, I hope this lesson will endure."

That is how Real Clear Politics Washington editor Carl M. Cannon concluded his April 17article  "Abortion: Journalism's Most Sacred Cow." Cannon began his piece with a personal story about his experience at the San Diego Union-Tribune when his liberal colleagues protested their publisher who, as a devout Catholic was pro-life and thereby refused to run an advertisement for a local Planned Parenthood clinic. As Cannon explains, his colleagues cloaked their complaints in terms of a journalist's aversion to censorship, but as Cannon says he came to discover, it is the liberal media that regularly censors the grisly, bloody reality of abortion (emphasis mine; h/t my colleague Matt Hadro):

In her 19-paragraph Metro section front-pager, "D.C. cab ride ends in rape of woman, police say," Washington Post reporter Suzy Khimm waited until the very last paragraph to mention that suspect Mohammed Suleiman Roble is in the United States illegally.

"Roble is a Somali immigrant who came to the U.S. illegally, according to a 2012 arrest warrant. His lawyer, Lavonda Graham-Williams, declined to comment on either of the charges," noted Khimm. [preceding link to PlainSite.org not in original Post report]

At 3:38 p.m. Eastern, Huffington Post blogger and Al Sharpton radio producer Nida Khan speculated on Twitter that an anti-government group may be responsible for the deadly bombings at the Boston Marathon.

"We don't know anything yet of course, but it is tax day & my first thought was all these anti-gov groups, but who knows," tweeted Khan, who immediately received a lot of blowback on Twitter for politicizing the tragedy. But rather than back down, Khan defended her speculation in subsequent tweets like these:

"CNN and MSNBC, as we can see with the gun control debate are openly promoting not just gun control but the president's gun control agenda and calling it news," NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell argued on the April 11 edition of Hannity, where he appeared for the popular weekly Media Mash segment. Reacting to the fact that MSNBC's Morning Joe program gave Vice President Biden an entire three-hour program yesterday to push for more gun control, Bozell added that the bias is so endemic that it must be addressed at the corporate level of media ownership, as the so-called news networks are pushing a political agenda, not relaying information and giving time for both sides of the debate.

For the benefit of his viewers at home, Fox News host Sean Hannity played clips of Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) and Vice President Joe Biden praising CNN and MSNBC respectively for their biased coverage. "We appreciate your support too, this is very, very important," Manchin told the anchors of Thursday's edition of CNN's Starting Point.  Mr. Vice President, thank you so much," faux conservative Joe Scarborough told the vice president as he wrapped up the April 11 Morning Joe, thanking him for a "great discussion." "No, thank you!" Biden shot back. "No, no, no, no, no. You have changed the debate in America.... The two guys that deserve, if anything gets done [on gun control] - an award here are you and Michael Bloomberg." [watch the video below]

In a 23-paragraph story -- headlined "States move to restrict gun magazines" in the print edition -- stacked heavily in favor of gun control advocates, the Washington Post's Sari Horwitz insulted her readers intelligence with sloppy reporting and baseless claims.

"Experts say limiting size of devices could reduce deaths in mass shootings," insisted the subheadline. But it turns out Horwitz only quoted one such "expert," David Chipman, who happened to be a "senior policy adviser for Mayors Against Illegal Guns." Two paragraphs later, Horwitz noted that "gun rights advocates" like Lawrence Keane of the National Shooting Sports Foundation dismiss that notion as "speculative at best." So what makes Chipman an expert while the senior vice president of a shooting sports trade group is not, other, that is, than the liberal journalist's biases on gun control?

The liberal media "are deliberately censoring news and information from the American people" on ObamaCare that would cast the Obama administration in a negative light, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell charged on the April 11 edition of Varney & Co.

The Media Research Center president rattled off a few such developments that the liberal media completely ignored (watch the full segment below):

NBC Meet the Press host David Gregory reportedly threw quite the tantrum on Tuesday over a charity event held on a street near his home that has temporarily caused a shortage of on-street parking.

The Washington Post's Reliable Source column has the story (emphasis mine):

MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry this afternoon took to her blog on the network's website to "double down" on her recent "Lean Forward" spot in which she lamented that we as Americans don't have a view of our "collective" responsibility to the nation's children.

From start to finish, the Tulane professor played the victim of right-wing persecution, even closing with a link to Matthew 5:44, where Jesus commands his followers to "love [their] enemies and pray for those who persecute [them]." Here's how Harris-Perry opened her April 9 blog (emphasis mine):

As if it weren't enough for the Washington Post to cheerlead for Maryland's new stringent gun control law in the editorial pages and in biased news accounts, staff writers Aaron Davis and Paul Schwartzman today rewarded liberal governor and potential 2016 presidential contender Martin O'Malley with a 62-paragraph front-page victory lap headlined "Behind Md.'s tough gun law, a personal push."

"Md. governor driven by one fear: Could Newtown happen here?" insisted the headline on the the jump page. Left virtually unexamined, of course, would be how O'Malley's push for stringent gun control would help him campaign among liberal base voters in the 2016 primaries. No, Davis and Schwartzman painted O'Malley as driven by a purely altruistic desire to spare Maryland parents the pain of burying their children thanks to a mad gunman's rage:

President Obama will officially transmit his fiscal year 2014 budget proposal on Thursday, a full 66 days after the deadline set by law. The past two years, by contrast, the president has been merely a week late, although as this chart via budget.house.gov shows, the norm among presidents since Harding has been to submit the budget either shortly before or on the deadline date.

But in reporting on the matter, Politico's Ginger Gibson relegated mention of that delinquency to paragraph 13 in her 19-paragraph story, "GOP ready to bash President Obama's budget." To Gibson, even President Obama's inexcusable tardiness in presenting a federal budget must be presented in light of partisan Republicans, who:

Fox News reporter Jana Winter may serve six months in jail for refusing to disclose to a court two anonymous sources from a story she broke on July 25, 2012, related to alleged Aurora, Colorado theater shooter James Holmes.

Mackenzie Weinger of Politico has the details and notes that, at least thus far, it seems only Fox News has shown concern over a journalist being squeezed to break the confidence of her sources (emphases mine):

When Jimmy Fallon replaces Jay Leno at NBC's The Tonight Show, the show will move back east to New York City, to be broadcast from network headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. The move makes financial sense for the network in part because the state of New York worked out a sweetheart tax deal for NBCUniversal to execute such a move.

In essence, the long suffering taxpayers of New York State will take a hit because their state's politicians create a tax break which seems designed explicitly to both relocate the Tonight Show and the variety show America's Got Talent, which will be moving its production from New Jersey. From today's Wall Street Journal editorial, "A Tax Break for the 0.01%":

"I never thought I would write these words, but I agree with Bill O’Reilly (in part)." That's how Center for American Progress senior fellow and liberal theologian Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite opened her latest column for the Washington Post "On Faith" section, "Thumping the Bible: O’Reilly, gay marriage, and theology."

Brooks Thistlethwaite was praising the Fox News anchor for "vigorously defending his statement that opponents of same-sex marriage needed to do more than 'thump the Bible' if they wanted to win the debate." "If you want to influence public policy from a faith perspective, thumping the Bible does not constitute a religious argument," the Chicago Theological Seminary professor pontificated. But as we at NewsBusters have documented repeatedly, Brooks Thistlethwaite repeatedly uses the Bible to justify her calls for liberal policy prescriptions on everything from gun control to tax hikes to gay marriage.

Clueless Chris Matthews stepped into it this week when he expressed shock that women actually fear domestic violence. After watching the clip on the "Media Mash" segment on Fox News Channel's April 3 edition of Hannity, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell observed "It is a head scratcher because he spent all of last year and all of 2011 telling us that there was a war on women." [video embedded below the page break]

"He doesn't understand that there are -- in 2010, there were 765,000 cases documented of attacks on women. So suddenly he's oblivious to that," the Media Research Center founder observed. Host Sean Hannity also addressed the latest incident where Chris Matthews tried to tar conservatives with murderous violence, this time the slayings of prosecutors in Texas that may be connected to the Aryan Brotherhood. Responding to that video, Bozell observed:

On March 23, my colleague Mark Finkelstein noted how MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry considers the unborn child a "thing" which takes a "lot of money" to "turn into a human," costing thousands of dollars to care for each year of his/her life. Now it appears that Harris-Perry thinks that, after they're born, children fundamentally belong to the state.

Narrating a new MSNBC "Lean Forward" spot, the Tulane professor laments that we in America  "haven't had a very collective notion that these are our children." "[W]e have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to their communities," Harris-Perry argued.

On Monday, the Associated Press announced that it would no longer accept "illegal immigrant" as a term for its news copy, banishing it from its AP Stylebook, which has been nicknamed "the Journalist's Bible" because of its widespread use in the industry. Well, our friend Dan Joseph at our sister site MRCTV.org talked to average Americans on the street in Washington, D.C., and found that they're more likely to favor amnesty when the supposed beneficiary is an "undocumented worker" as opposed to an "illegal immigrant."

Joseph asked passerby on Capitol Hill "Who do you think should be given legal status first.... Should it be the undocumented workers, or should it be the illegal immigrants?" Of course, "undocumented workers" and "illegal immigrants" are the exact same thing, but everyday people on the street were more amenable to "undocumented workers" getting "legal status." [watch the video below the page break]

"It seems to me" that the Associated Press's newly announced plan to scrub "illegal immigrant" from its Stylebook is "an attempt to control the language... it's a form of political correctness," argued substitute host Stuart Varney on the April 3 Your World with Neil Cavuto. "You can subtly affect your coverage and your thinking about the issue" by "softening the language," noted Varney, who himself is a legal immigrant to the United States from the United Kingdom. [video follows page break; MP3 audio here]

Yes, agreed Varney's guest, NewsBusters senior editor Tim Graham as, "it's a form of political correctness over factual correctness." Graham noted that the Associated Press and New York Times had long held the line on keeping "illegal immigrant" over the nonsensical "undocumented immigrant" alternative, that lobbying by pro-amnesty groups, as well as liberal minority journalism groups pushed the AP to make a politically calculated decision:

In his 19-paragraph page A4 story headlined "NRA-backed study urges armed staff at schools," staff writer Peter Finn waited until the 12th paragraph to mention that a father of a slain student at Sandy Hook was at the NRA's April 2 news conference in which former Rep. Asa Hutchinson (R-Ark.) unveiled a "National School Shield Program" that detailed how school districts might arm security guards and/or teachers to thwart potential attacks by shooters.

Of course Finn made sure to quote the scathing attack of a liberal critic a few paragraphs earlier. "Today's report is nothing more than a continuation of the NRA's attempts to prey on America's fears, saturate our schools with more guns and turn them into armed fortresses," Finn quoted Marian Wright Edelman of the Children's Defense Fund, who added that the NRA's plan "must be soundly rejected."