Matthew Sheffield's blog

Barack Obama won the 2008 election in an electoral vote landslide, but racism darn near cost him the election - and if he loses this year, it will be because of racism, so says a doctoral candidate at Harvard University.

Google search data proves it, says Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, who is a candidate for a Ph.D. in economics, and wrote a post for the New York Times' “Campaign Stops” blog entitled “How Racist Are We? Ask Google.” Unfortunately, the study is a classic case of confusing correlation with causation.

How much does a biased media machine help its favorite party and candidates?

Recent data from Italy suggests biased media favoring a certain national candidate and party is worth anywhere from 2 to 5.5 points to that candidate and his party in the final election tally. 

President Obama's declaration that “the private sector is doing fine” immediately became the headline out of his news conference last week, with even traditional liberal media outlets reporting it without spinning it for Obama. Even Time magazine headlined it, “As Economic Concerns Mount, President Obama Says, ‘The Private Sector Is Doing Fine'”

However, as the story has continued, some of Obama's allies in the media are starting to try to help Obama out by obfuscating.

First it was former congressman Alan Grayson running a red light right into a bus, now another famous Democrat has gotten in trouble for violating a traffic law in a serious way. Obama Administration Commerce Secretary John Bryson has been cited for a hit and run offense involving an auto accident he had in Los Angeles over the weekend:

One of the most mystifying aspects of the coverage of the Wisconsin recall election  has been the media's ongoing use of exit poll results in stories suggesting that -- despite Gov. Scott Walker's big win against the efforts of Democrats and Labor Unions to end his term early -- President Obama has a big lead over Mitt Romney in the crucial swing state.

The continued faith in the flawed Wisconsin survey is even more amazing when you consider the dreadful record exit polls have of matching up with the actual vote totals. In nearly every case of error, exit polls have oversampled Democrats, a fact almost never pointed out by the nation's news organizations.

After being pilloried for months for the half-billion dollar Solyndra debacle, Obama Democrats are desperately trying to push a the idea that Mitt Romney has a Solyndra like failure of his own to answer for.

Upon further inspection, this claim has been shown to be false but that hasn't stopped DC newspaper Politico from repeating the false notion and crafting headlines implying the charge is true.

Journalists are said to love transparency, at least when it comes to other people. When it comes to others exposing reporters' own conflicts of interest and past histories, however, some take a decidedly different tone.

Ben Howe, contributing writer to both RedState.com and Breitbart.com, has posted video of a brief but instructive conversation with NPR reporter Peter Overby regarding NPR assigning Overby to cover stories about the liberal Common Cause challenging the tax-exempt status of the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council, even though Overby is a former Common Cause employee. In recent weeks, Overby has written five stories about Common Cause's attack on ALEC.

Today is the big day for Wisconsinites as the long-awaited recall election of governor Scott Walker finally ends.

After playing up the contest as important and of national portent, many liberals in and out of the press are now trying to say it doesn't matter. Still, President Obama has made it a point to make himself scarce in the race, refusing to come to the aid of Tom Barrett, the Democratic mayor of Milwaukee trying to unseat Walker.

Stay with us tonight as we'll have an NB Live chat to keep tabs on the results and monitor the media reaction.

Actress Sarah Jessica Parker, famous for her role as a helpless know-it-all writer, has decided to throw her support behind President Obama in a new ad aimed at attracting donors to his reelection campaign.

In the ad, which debuted during MTV’s annual Movie Awards, Parker clearly patronizes to her intended audience by referring to Obama as “that guy” as she invites them to eat dinner with herself, the president and First Lady Michelle Obama.

Sometimes it's the little things that reveal the persistent liberal Democratic bias in the elite media. Writing in the American Spectator, Jeffrey Lord notes that the recent media kerfuffle over the fact that Mitt Romney's wife, Ann, enjoys riding horses is actually demonstrative of how journalists seemingly cannot help themselves.

You see, the media were not always so averse to presidential spouses enjoying equestrian activities. Back when John F. Kennedy's wife, Jackie, enjoyed them, they were regarded in a much different light by the left-dominated media:

Liberals like to believe that tax and regulation policies have no effect on the economy despite mountains of evidence to the contrary. The latest proof of this comes via the Tax Foundation which calculated that millions of Americans are leaving high-tax areas like New York or California in favor of lower-tax jurisdictions like Texas or Florida. As a result, the tax-happy states are missing out on billions of dollars in revenues they might have been able to have otherwise had their residents stayed put:

Today is a big day in Texas as the race to replace retiring GOP senator Kay Bailey Hutchison is finally facing its first vote. While there is a Democratic primary today, more people are paying attention to the Republican race since the winner of that contest is heavily favored to win in November.

Because the primary has so many candidates, it's likely that the top two candidates are going to have to face each other again in a runoff election. In polls, the top two candidates are David Dewhurst, the more establishment-oriented liuetenant governor, and Ted Cruz, an attorney who is going after the Tea Party vote:

A recent Bloomberg Businessweek story focuses on how both the Romney and Obama campaigns try to control the story by limiting press access to fund-raisers. That's comparatively rare considering usually journalists like to complain only about Republicans doing so.

"Policies to limit coverage at a fundraiser help promote a feeling of exclusivity for top donors, and insulate candidates from verbal gaffes that have the potential to overpower their public messages," says the article by Bloomberg News’s Kate Andersen Brower and Julie Bykowic, summarizing why both campaigns do it. And yet, while both campaigns restrict the press to being present only for portions of most fundraisers, the story - and a follow-up commentary published yesterday - reveal just how much further the Obama campaign goes in trying to prevent the public from knowing what Obama says to donors in private.

We already know that the punitive tax hikes on a small number of wealthy individuals favored by liberals will do almost nothing to pay off the national debt. What we didn't know is just how divided Democrats are as to who will get the shocking tax increases.

The Hill reports today that congressional Democrats can't agree on who should be targeted to pay more in taxes, those families making $250,000 or more or those making more than that. The prolonged debate (most of which hasn't been too public) reveals just how much of a political game the whole thing is:

If you’ve ever wondered why you don’t hear much reporting on some of the dreadful traditions and lack of rights that women in the Islamic world often face, MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry provided a perfect illustration in a recent discussion with Egyptian journalist Mona Eltahawy.

Eltahawy’s essay, which appeared in the magazine Foreign Policy, is a straightforward attempt to disabuse people of the notion that there is any sort of equivalence between the treatment of women in the Islamic and Western worlds. In her words, non-Arabs need to “resist cultural relativism and know that even in countries undergoing revolutions and uprisings, women will remain the cheapest bargaining chips.”

It appears we have a trend, ladies and gentlemen. Significant numbers of Democratic voters in several states have now voted their displeasure against the extreme liberalism of the Obama Administration.

The president faced another embarrassment Tuesday night as over 40 percent of Democratic primary voters in the states of Kentucky and Arkansas voted against Barack Obama. The two states joined West Virginia where 43 percent of Democrats voted in favor of an imprisoned Texas felon over the imperious chief executive:

A new biography of legendary CBS Evening News anchor Walter Cronkite reveals some amazing facts about Cronkite's liberal bias and various transgressions of journalistic ethics which expose the falsity of the establishment media's carefully-crafted image of neutrality.

As Jonathan S. Tobin wrote for Commentary, the revelations about Cronkite undermine “the mainstream media’s myth about its own impartiality” before the birth of Fox News. If you believe the self-described mainstream media, it is Fox News which is irredeemably biased and not themselves:

File this one under wishful thinking -- or simply just another case of a liberal newspaper trying to help President Barack Obama's floundering re-election effort. The Tennessean, the daily newspaper in Tennessee's capital city Nashville, over the weekend trumpeted this headline: "Vanderbilt Poll: Obama Closes Gap With Romney."

According to the article, Obama is just one point behind Romney in one of the reddest states in the South, a state John McCain won in 2008 by 15.1 percentage points over Obama. It's also a state where the Republican Party captured near two-thirds majorities in both houses of the state legislature in 2010 and where voters chose Republicans in 7 of 9 congressional districts. The state has a popular Republican governor elected in landslide that same year, and both its U.S. Senators are Republicans.

So … how does it appear that Obama has “closed the gap” with Romney?

YouTube has reversed its decision to censor the views of a pro-traditional marriage organization after attention was drawn to its removal of a video last week produced by Christian preacher and hard rock drummer Bradlee Dean.

Last week, YouTube – owned by Google, whose corporate motto used to be “Don't Be Evil” -- removed the video, which spotlights how gay rights extremists are using laws in Canada to censor those who disagree with their perspective.

Liberals insist that they, too, can be trusted with national security matters and yet we keep seeing reports like this where sensitive materials are being leaked--not to help America's enemies but to gain popularity for the White House, in this case, accidentally revealing to the media about a double agent inside Al Qaeda:

In a victory for gay rights extremists, YouTube has agreed to remove a video critical of Canadian laws concerning homosexuality from its website, even though the video discusses policy issues and does not use any derogatory language about gays and does not advocate violence against them.

The video created May 16 by preacher and hard rock drummer Bradlee Dean to accompany his weekly column published by WorldNet Daily and other news outlets, exposes facts about the hatred and oppression directed at conservative Christians and opponents of gay marriage in Canada by the radical Left toward people of faith, those who hold to traditional marriage. The video also details a solemn warning to American’s to get vocal on the issue or prepare for the cultural overhaul under way in Canada.

It's become quite a bit of a refrain among liberal journalists that nefarious conservatives are unwilling to compromise and unite with more moderate GOPers in order to "get things done," yet in many cases, the very opposite is true. In several recent elections, conservative unknowns have scored the primary victory (think Sharron Angle) and gone on to receive only tepid establishment support despite calls for "unity." That does not appear to be happening in the state of Nebraska after Deb Fischer defeated two better known candidates, Jon Bruning and Don Stenberg, to receive the Republican nomination for that state's federal Senate race.

Instead of whining like Indiana Republican Dick Lugar did after he went down in defeat, Bruning and Stenberg are banding together to support Fischer's candidacy:

As previously noted here at NewsBusters, while the predominantly liberal hosts of The View did generally coddle and flatter President Obama during his appearance on their show yesterday, they do deserve some credit for questioning at least one ridiculous thing he said when he claimed that he might lose the election due to his untraditional name.

In his appearance, Obama suggested that prejudice among some voters will make it more difficult for him to be re-elected. When asked how close he expected the November presidential election to be, Obama said: "When your name is Barack Obama, it's always tight." After one of the hosts noted that Obama's full name was "Barack Hussein Obama," the president repeated his full name twice, stressing his middle name and implying that it caused voters to vote against him.