Bias by Omission

• Thirteen Catholic church abuse articles made the front page; just one BBC piece did
• Lead sentence linked Pope to scandals 20 times; linked new Times boss to BBC scandals just once.

It’s a horrifying and tragically familiar story: A beloved and trusted institution is rocked by allegations of sexual abuse of minors over many years. Intrepid reporters dig to learn how the crimes could have gone on so for so long, who knew about them, and if officials kept it quiet. Story after newspaper story leads with speculation that corruption may be systemic and the cover-up may go all the way to the man at the top.

First of all, I should and will stipulate that any legitimate aid and comfort to victims of Hurricane/Superstorm Sandy those affiliated with the Occupy Movement are providing is noble.

That said, Meghan Barr's report at the Associated Press on their efforts is so absurdly fawning that it insults the thousands of others volunteering with private charities who are providing assistance on a meaningful and likely much more effective scale.

In a Thursday afternoon item carried at the Los Angeles Times via reporters Shashank Bengali and Joseph Serna (HT NewsBusters tipster Gary Hall), New York Governor Andrew Cuomo claimed that "When we built New York, we didn’t think about floods, about storms. We didn’t have hurricanes and floods. ... Extreme weather is here to stay. Climate change is a reality. Political gridlock has held us back too long. ... Maybe Mother Nature is telling us something. One time, two times, three times. There are places that are going to be victimized by storms. We know that now."

Let's review a little history -- history anyone in the establishment press could have found in the Google News Archive and Wikipedia as I did. What I found demonstrates how extreme and outrageously untrue Mr. Cuomo's "we didn't have hurricanes and floods" claim really is.

Those in the press who claim to completely understand why stock market indices containing 30, 500, or thousands of individual companies went up or down on any given day are at best theorizing and at worst dissembling. The way the press handled this week's decline by blaming it all on the "fiscal cliff," as if it only became relevant on Wednesday morning, definitely fits in the latter category. Leading the pack, as usual, was the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press.

The Dow, S&P 500, and Nasdaq all advanced modestly on Monday and Tuesday, fell sharply beginning with Wednesday's opening bell through the end of Thursday before recovering a tiny bit on Friday. But if one is to believe the AP's Steve Rothwell, the large tax increases facing the U.S. on January 1 explain the entire week's results, even though the declines didn't begin until this little thing called a presidential election was concluded on Tuesday evening after a Monday and Tuesday when no one really knew which candidate would win:

As of shortly before 1 p.m. ET, at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, there is no story about what the Chicago Sun-Times reported Wednesday evening about just-reelected Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., namely that he " is in the midst of plea discussions with the feds probing his alleged misuse of campaign funds." There is also no story on the home page at Politico.

Selected paragraphs from Michael Sneed's Sun-Times report follow the jump (bolds are mine):

Now that their guy will be in the White House for another term, the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, has apparently commenced its "Cleaning up Benghazi" project -- as, naturally, has the Obama administration.

As part of that effort, the wire service's Greg Risling, reporting from Los Angeles at 6:14 p.m., made only the vaguest of references to how the film "roiled the Middle East" and "sparked violence ... killing dozens," without mentioning how it was dishonestly leveraged by terrorists as cover for protests and violence, and of course without mentioning how Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and so many others in his administration spent well over a week -- despite clearly knowing better -- citing the film as the cause of the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya which killed four Americans, including Libyan ambassador Christopher Stevens. Excerpts follow the jump (saved here in full for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes; bolds are mine):

It's no secret that the liberal media have boosted Obama with bias by commission, going out of their way to treat him with gauzy coverage, softball interviews, and by hyping his celebrity status, but bias by omission played an even larger role in the media's part to ensure the president's reelection, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell told Stuart Varney this morning. [see video below page break]

Appearing on the November 7 edition Fox Business Network's Varney & Co. shortly after 10 a.m., Bozell, also the founder and president of the Media Research Center, told the audience that the media simply "stopped reporting the news" on things that would, if covered, make Obama look bad. The only questions which remain, Bozell added were:

So the meme is supposedly set. Final pre-election expectations are that the popular vote in the 2012 presidential contest will come in roughly deadlocked. Rasmussen and Gallup show Republican nominee Mitt Romney up by one point. Other polls show either a tie or slight lead for incumbent Democrat Barack Obama.

Set against this expectation, don't be surprised if someone in the press, perhaps even at one of the big networks, gets overexcited and projects Barack Obama the winner based on Tuesday's early exit polls without realizing that their scope and design have changed from previous presidential elections in two fundamental ways.

On Sunday's 60 Minutes, CBS's Steve Kroft tried to paper over Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's role in fostering deadlock in the Senate. Kroft spotlighted Reid's "responsibility" for setting the body's agenda, but quickly added that the Nevada senator has "just as much of a responsibility as Senator McConnell - to make the system work and to do some things."

The correspondent also turned to Steven Smith, who hinted that the Republican minority in the Senate was to blame for the "deadlock" in Congress, despite Reid's Democratic majority not passing a budget in over 3 years: "If you're in the minority...you know that if you can slow down everything, the majority will have less time to get to its entire agenda....when the minority blocks a piece of legislation, who does the public blame? Is it the minority for its obstructionism, or is it the majority that just wasn't willing to compromise enough?" He failed to mention that Smith is a former fellow at the liberal Brookings Institution.

Though it occupies four web pages, it's hard to avoid thinking that Alex Isenstadt at Politico is hoping news consumers only look at his story's headline ("Democrats' drive to retake House falters") and not its damning yet still woefully incomplete content.

The headline would make you think that Dems will gain seats, but not enough to achieve a majority. Isenstadt bravely concludes early on that "Democrats are expected to pick up five seats at best ... (and) might even lose ground and drop one or two seats to the Republican majority. But the rest of his writeup virtually screams "double-digit losses," and fails in several respects to properly assign blame for what appears to be an impending Democratic Party debacle (bolds are mine):

A Philly.com report tells us that "National Guard plays key role in N.J. relief efforts." The LA Times has reported that "More than 10,000 National Guard troops in 13 states have been mobilized to assist in the response to Hurricane Sandy, including more than 2,200 who are assisting with recovery efforts in New York." Guard troops are also in New York City to some degree (Mayor Michael Bloomberg says "We have 13 distribution sites opened, staffed by National Guard members"), including hard-hit Staten Island.

But at least as of Thursday, according to Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, as reported by Eli Rosenburg at the the Brooklyn Paper, which calls itself the borough's "leading news media," the mayor has refused a request to allow the Guard into the borough. Based on resource deployment priorities, the Mayor's refusal could be justified. But wait until you see the actual reason Bloomberg gave for his refusal, one which you might think would have received more media attention by now (bolds are mine):

As the Big Three's evening newscasts ignored the latest in the controversy over the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya for seven straight days, their morning shows aren't doing much better. On Friday, ABC's Good Morning America and CBS This Morning together devoted less than two minutes of air time - 1 minute, 50 seconds - to the ambush that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three American military veterans.

NBC's Today show mentioned the Libya attack only in passing, when Tom Brokaw noted it as one of a "series" of supposed October surprises in the presidential race, including "the President not showing up for the first debate, Benghazi", and Hurricane Sandy.

Americans of all political stripes were distressed by the September 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including the U.S. Ambassador. But the reaction of the national broadcast networks has been demonstrably and shamefully partisan from the beginning of this story.

In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attack, all three broadcast networks touted the political angle that the events would bolster President Obama — “reminding voters of his power as commander-in-chief,” as NBC’s Peter Alexander asserted on the September 14 edition of Today — while Mitt Romney would be damaged by his supposedly flubbed initial reaction.

But as the story progressed and reports indicated that the Obama administration knowingly misrepresented the nature of the attack, failed to provide adequate security, and refused to authorize a potential rescue mission to save those under fire, those same journalists have been either slow to report those developments, or altogether silent.

Back in April, MSNBC's Martin Bashir charged Gov. Mitt Romney with being a liar, went on to quote Mormon doctrinal texts, and strongly hinted that the Republican presidential candidate was in danger of hellfire. In early December 2011, Bashir hinted at a similar pronouncement of anathema on GOP candidate Herman Cain.

But now with just five days left until the election, Bashir is infuriated by a TV ad cut by former Baptist minister and ex-governor Mike Huckabee (R-Ark.) which simply reminds Christian voters that God is watching their vote and that their choices at the ballot box ring through to eternity. "Will you vote the values that will stand the test of fire?" Huckabee asks in the spot. Bashir, no biblical illiterate he, erroneously took this to be a suggestion that Huckabee was suggesting the "unpardonable sin" was casting a vote for Obama. Both a review of the full context of the ad [embedded below the page break] and a basic understanding of the relevant biblical text Huckabee alludes to shows it's nothing of the sort. [MP3 audio of segment here; video excerpt of Bashir segment also follows page break]

Earlier today, NewsBusters publisher and Media Research Center President Brent Bozell accurately noted that the Big Three TV news networks are "as guilty in ... (the Benghazi) cover-up as is the administration." He did so based on the fact that "For the sixth night in a row, ABC World News, CBS Evening News, and NBC Nightly News refused to give one single second of coverage to a Fox News report that the Obama Administration denied help to those attacked and killed by terrorists at the US consulate in Benghazi on September 11."

Not that it mitigates the legitimacy of Mr. Bozell's outrage, but one can take some comfort in the fact that fewer people are tuning in to the three nightly news broadcasts than were doing so a year ago, and that their ratings in the 25-54 demographic in the past five weeks are down by almost 20 percent from the same five-week period during the 2008 presidential cycle. A table containing individual results from the past two weeks and the average results from the past five is after the jump (a previous NewsBusters post on the first three weeks is here).

For the sixth night in a row, ABC World News, CBS Evening News, and NBC Nightly News refused to give one single second of coverage to a Fox News report that the Obama Administration denied help to those attacked and killed by terrorists at the US consulate in Benghazi on September 11. According to a Media Research Center analysis, ABC, CBS, and NBC have failed to cover this devastating story - not to confirm it, not to knock it down, and never mind do their own investigation. The story broke last Friday, long before Hurricane Sandy swamped the news cycle. Further, neither The Washington Post nor The New York Times has committed a single inch of their newspapers to a news story about this report.

According to Fox News, “sources claim officers at the nearby CIA annex in Benghazi were twice told to stand down when they requested to help those at the consulate. They later ignored those orders. Fox News was also told that a subsequent request for back-up when the annex came under attack was denied as well.”

NewsBusters publisher and Media Research Center President Brent Bozell reacts:

The heroic actions of Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty on September 11 in Benghazi, Libya, are a "riveting story" that the broadcast networks should be clamoring to cover, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell told FNC's Sean Hannity last night. Similarly, the criticism of the Obama administration by Woods's father has been ignored by major media outlets other than Fox News, Hannity observed.

"There's a massive coverup going on," Bozell noted. "I think it is huge, it's bigger than most people realize it is. I believe that if the truth came out, it would cost Barack Obama his reelection. And the media are so vested in his reelection, they are flat-out complicit in this coverup. They are refusing to report news," the Media Research Center told the audience of the October 31 Hannity. [watch the "Media Mash" segment here]

Joel Gehrke at the Washington Examiner has noted the harsh racism recently expressed by the same pastor who delivered the benediction at President Barack Obama's inauguration in January 2009. Readers should read Gehrke's post as well as the underlying article in the Monroe County Reporter in Forsyth, Georgia to get the full flavor of what the Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery said at St. James Baptist Church this past Saturday, because you can virtually guarantee the establishment press won't touch it, and this post won't be able to capture every offensive word and phrase.

Selected paragraphs from the Reporter's coverage, including its impact-minimizing subheadline, follow the jump (bolds are mine throughout this post):

Toledo Blade reporter Tyrel Linkhorn got sucked in by Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne's misleading email to Chrysler employees today. The Politico's Alexander Burns relayed Linkhorn's gullibility to the rest of the nation -- or at least the few people scattered throughout the nation who might bother to read it.

Marchionne, as quoted by Linkhorn told employees that "Jeep assembly lines will remain in operation in the United States and will constitute the backbone of the brand. It is inaccurate to suggest anything different." While that may be true, it doesn't change the fact that the company announced plans to build a new Jeep model in Italy which will be exported to Europe and North America. As Bloomberg reported early this afternoon:

It didn't take long for the Luddites at Occupy Wall Street to go loony in the wake of Hurricane Sandy's damage.

Michelle Malkin's Twitchy.com web site captured tweets about how showing reactions in the midst of all the death and destruction at OWS's official Twitter account you won't see in the establishment press. The most egregious examples follow the jump.

Yesterday, Bloomberg News reported that Fiat "is considering building Chrysler models in Italy, including Jeeps, for export to North America." Today, that news became real when company CEO Sergio Marchnionne announced, in Bloomberg's words (in paragraph 6, subtitled "Italy's Jeep"), that it will "build a small Jeep in Italy for export beginning in 2014 ... a new model for Europe and the U.S. that isn’t currently in production."

Of course, today's Bloomberg report led with Marchionne's clever denial about the company's plans for manufacturing in China: "Jeep production will not be moved from the United States to China." No, he has instead set the stage for newer Jeep models exported to the U.S. to gradually supplant older models made in the U.S. over several years. This should be an embarrassment to those who engineered the Obama administration's bailout of Chrysler in 2009, ripping off secured creditors in the bankruptcy process and thereby giving Fiat a larger initial share of the company than it deserved. But don't worry, Colleen Barry at the Associated Press is there with vague language to ensure that this news doesn't become general knowledge (bold is mine):

On Friday, Neil Stevens at RedState described that morning's report from Gallup by Jerry M. Jones comparing the makeup of the 2004, 2008 and 2012 electorates as having "buried the lede so far deep, they’ll be fracking in Australia to bring it to the surface."

Indeed. The headline ("2012 U.S. Electorate Looks Like 2008") tells viewers, "nothing's different, so you really don't need to read on." The post's chart, after boring us to tears with demographic stats which have barely changed in the past four and eight years tracking characteristics which don't directly drive people's voting preferences, finally get to the ones relating to party affiliation.

The latest and possibly last (we can hope) preelection poll from partnership between the Associated Press and GfK Roper International purportedly tells us that most of us "now express prejudice toward blacks" whether we "recognize those feelings or not."

That's the conclusion communicated by AP reporter Sonya Ross and wire service deputy director of polling Jennifer Agiesta. In case we don't get the point, the item's accompanying photograph at the AP national site, Yahoo News and likely elsewhere is of Barack Obama, who despite the recognized and unrecognized racism of most Americans managed to carry 53% of the vote in 2008. Contrary to the report's headline, the AP pair admit that the AP-GfK poll results alone (done online, to add insult to injury) don't prove the point they're trying to make; other bizarre tests are also involved.

It's hard to find a benchmark against which to compare remarks delivered by Vice President Joe Biden, but here's one from a past administration. In June 2004, Bush 43 Vice President Dick Cheney was greeted on the Senate Floor at the annual Senate photo op by Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy. Leahy had previously been flogging the left's phantasm over alleged "profiteering" by Halliburton, the company at which Cheney had served as Chairman and CEO from 1995-2000. At the end of a testy exchange, Cheney either said "(F-word) you" or "(F-word) yourself."

The Washington Post (go to the third of 22 pages at the link), the New York Times, and the Associated Press covered the story. A Taipei Times dispatch claiming to a blend of Times and AFP reporting actually contains the F-word. A Google News Archive search surfaces at least a dozen establishment press stories and commentaries which are still out there. However, I found almost no mainstream press stories covering what the father of slain Benghazi-defending hero Tyrone Woods claims that Biden said to him when the casket containing his son's remains returned to America (bold was in original):

In his weekly radio address on July 3, 2010, President Barack Obama announced that "the Department of Energy is awarding nearly $2 billion in conditional commitments from the Recovery Act to two solar companies." Neither of them was named Solyndra.

One of the two companies Obama did name was Fort Collins, Colorado-based Abound Solar, which Obama touted as a company which would create "more than 2,000 construction jobs and 1,500 permanent jobs" at two new plants which "When fully operational ... will produce millions of state-of-the-art solar panels each year." As Amy Oliver detailed at Townhall a year ago, Abound is a classic case of Obama bundler cronyism. In July, just shy of two years after Obama's address, the company, which benefited from $400 million of Department of Energy loan guarantees, filed for bankruptcy. Yesterday, a Colorado District Attorney announced a criminal investigation. So far, it's only local Colorado-area news (internal links added by me; bolds are mine):

During the past almost seven weeks, the establishment press has dug itself a deep credibility hole thanks to its disgracefully selective, negligent, and politically twisted reporting on the deadly terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya on September 11 and its determined attempt to defend the Obama administration's ever-evolving and contradictory stories about the attack's origins. Along the way, legitimate questions have been raised about the administration's willingness and ability to protect those who serve us overseas.

Now the question is whether the press will let that hole get even deeper now that Jennifer Griffin at Fox News is reporting that the CIA requests for help during that attack were rejected. The first four paragraphs of the "read the whole thing" report follow:

While President Obama's record-breaking pace to raising a total of $1 billion earlier this month received significant media attention, there was little if any curiosity among the traditional press about how he was on track to achieve such an unprecedented milestone in presidential fundraising. The broadcast networks in particular have not bothered to mention the growing scandal that is being scrupulously pieced together by alternative media outlets.

An independently-owned website Obama.com (redirects to official site here) has been suspected of accepting millions of dollars worth of illegal foreign donations for months now. Despite all the speculation and accusations coming from a nonprofit organization known as the Government Accountability Institute (GAI), no action had been taken until recently.