Bias by Omission

[Update, 12:30 am Eastern Saturday: Josh Brahm of the RLCC, mentioned below, contacted me and sent me the link to an edited video taken of the assault, which is imbedded at right (obscene language warning). -MB.]

Steven Ertelt of LifeNews.com reported on Friday that a pro-life activist was assaulted on October 15 by a supporter of abortion in front of the Planned Parenthood in Fresno, California, during a vigil for the nationwide 40 Days for Life campaign. Ertelt also noted that local TV news outlets ignored the story of the assault in their evening broadcasts, brushing it aside either because the victim’s injury wasn’t serious enough, or because they thought a story on “chocolate-covered bacon” was more important.

Victor Fierro, director of Latinos4Life, a pro-life organization, was physically attacked by a “pro-choice woman,” according to the press release by Right to Life of Central California (RLCC), which was also cited in the LifeNews.com report. The woman “shouted obscenities” at the pro-life demonstrators participating in the 40 Days for Life vigil in front of the Planned Parenthood facility, “before attempting to break the event security camera and assaulting...Fierro....The attacker cut Fierro’s arm with an unknown object, drawing blood, and then stormed back to her car and fled the scene.” The entire incident was captured by the video camera, though most of the assault occurred outside of its field of vision. However, the camera did capture her face and her car’s tag number.

New York Times reporter Michael Brick went to College Station, Texas, to preview a college visit by Barack Obama today commemorating the 20th anniversary of the first President Bush's "Points of Light" volunteer organization.

In the condescending "At A&M, a Dance of  Decorum for Obama Visit," Brick posed fears that campus conservative activists at Texas A&M might embarrass themselves and their college with their "unchecked fervor," which "can be a raw and fearsome thing." Last year, you see, "the Young Conservatives embarrassed the university by throwing eggs at a picture of Mr. Obama."

Brick is being awfully protective of Obama. If defacing a picture of a president is an automatic embarrassment to a university, then every big college in America should be red-faced, since posters of Bush as Hitler were pretty much de rigueur at any decent campus protest.  But the Times never showed any concern for campus hatred of Republicans.

AEngland can't afford to help Alzheimer's patients pay for their medicine, but it can offer free shooting galleries to heroin addicts.

On Oct. 14 CNN's "American Morning" aired a segment about the controversial program that "gives heroin to heroin addicts at the taxpayers' expense." Correspondent Paula Newton declared, "A safe, steady supply of heroin is apparently just what the doctor ordered ... As radical as it is, for some it is really working." She also said that the British government's decision to dole out 97 percent pure heroin - "better than anything sold on the street" - "takes heroin off the streets."

Anchor John Roberts became the fourth CNN personality to omit the left-wing affiliation of Wendell Potter, as he interviewed the  on Tuesday’s American Morning. Roberts only described Potter as someone who “worked for two different insurance companies in the past, and now he’s working against them to help get reform passed.”

Before introducing his guest, the CNN anchor played up the merits of Senator Max Baucus’s health care reform proposal: “The Senate Finance Committee’s health care reform bill got high marks from the Congressional Budget Office for keeping the deficit down, but now, insurance companies say it will actually cost you and your family thousands of dollars more than you’re paying now. So who is telling the truth?”

After posing this rhetorical question, Roberts introduced his guest: “We’re joined by Wendell Potter. He has worked for two different insurance companies in the past, and now he’s working against them to help get reform passed.” An on-screen graphic gave a glowing description of the former insurance company spokesman’s career: “Former head of public relations at Cigna Corp. and Humana Inc., now a whistleblower against health insurance industry- advocate for health care reform.” Another chyron finally revealed that the guest was also “Sr. Fellow on Health Care, Ctr. For Media & Democracy,” but Roberts never revealed Potter’s affiliation with the left-wing organization.

Let's see. A Big 4 independent public accounting firm vs. the Democratic Party's go-to health care economics guy. Who has more presumptive credibility?

It's more than a little offensive to see the people whose party gave us entitlement programs with multitrillion-dollar unfunded liabilities (Social Security and Medicare), pension plans that are completely unsustainable (the federal government and many states), and year-over-year budget increases that almost always dwarf inflation -- in other words, people with absolutely no record of financial credibility on matters big and small -- go after Big 4 accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers and its "industry-funded" study on what would happen to insurance premiums under the BaucusCare iteration of ObamaCare with the eager assistance of their media apparatchiks.

Understand this: When PwC prepares a report for the health insurance industry projecting, in the Wall Street Journal's words, that "the Senate Finance Committee’s big health-care bill would raise health insurance premiums by thousands of dollars a year," one can be confident that it is based on exhaustively researched and thoroughly reviewed work.

Here's the whiny Democratic reaction to the firm's report:

I suppose President Obama is still running around telling everyone who will listen, along with anyone else who won't, that "If you like your doctors and medical providers, you can keep them."

It would also not surprise me to learn that Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick is still singing the praises of CommonwealthCare, the state-run system conservatives also deride as RomneyCare, so named after Mitt Romney, Patrick's allegedly Republican predecessor who brought it into being. Patrick even wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed column several weeks ago that called CommonwealthCare a "model for national reform."

As an apparently pivotal Senate committee vote on imposing statist health care on the entire country looms, the Boston Globe's Liz Kowalczyk has inconveniently reminded statists (HT Hot Air) that the alleged wonders of the Bay State's care regimen are instead leading it inexorably into serious rationing, and to a direct contradiction of Obama's and Patrick's core claims. Currently on the horizon are serious limitations on choice of care providers and annual capitated payments to those providers. Kowalczyk would probably protest that she never uses the word "rationing," but it really doesn't matter. Anyone with even a modicum of sense will recognize these moves for what they are.

Here are some of the key paragraphs in Kowalczyk's Sunday report:

NBC’s Today show on Sunday devoted a three-minute report to President Obama’s speech to “gay rights” proponents, where he promised a repeal of the military’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. The report had several sound bites from homosexual critics of the President, and none from proponents of keeping the policy. On the other hand, ABC’s GMA on Sunday had only one 23-second news brief on Obama’s speech.

“Lord, thank you for my enemies.”

Thus began El Rushbo’s interview with NBC national correspondent Jamie Gangel.  It is remarkable that, even when the media sit down with Limbaugh, they still find a way to be biased.  To be fair, Gangel did not conduct the interview like Keith Olbermann might have.  But there were a few points of interest which must be noted – and some even pointed out by Rush during the interview.

First up, Gangel asks Rush if he’s a racist or a homophobe:

JAMIE GANGEL [voice over B-roll]: Rush’s brand of satire also keeps everyone talking.  Parodies like this one, of Congressman Barney Frank, who also happens to be gay:

BARNEY FRANK IMPERSONATOR, singing:  “I am the banking queen!”

GANGEL: And this one about race, and candidate Barack Obama:

A New York Times article by Nick Bunkley on Friday targeted for print on Saturday about the status of contract talks between Ford Motor Company and the United Auto Workers piqued my interest in a previously neglected but important matter.

Ford and the UAW are apparently close to an agreement. In describing what Ford workers are being asked to give up, Bunkley wrote the following (bolds are mine throughout this post):

Ford executives have said the company needs more concessions to keep G.M. and Chrysler from having an advantage.

.... The deal that U.A.W. workers at Ford approved in March got rid of cost-of-living pay increases and performance bonuses through 2010 and eliminated the jobs bank program, which allows laid-off workers to continue receiving most of their pay. In addition to those concessions, G.M. and Chrysler workers agreed to work-rule changes and a provision that bars them from striking.

What? From press coverage at the time, you would have thought that unionized GM and Chrysler workers made ginormous, humungous, unprecedented sacrifices to enable their companies to get through bankruptcy and to emerge as lean, mean vehicle-making machines.

Uh, no.

How well I remember it. In April 2006, when Bob Carter, in a UK Telegraph op-ed, observed that there had been no warming of the earth since 1998, global warming advocates screamed that Carter didn't know what he was talking about; that he was only "a geologist at James Cook University, Queensland, engaged in paleoclimate research," not a real climatologist; and that anyway, the science was settled, so he (and we) should shut up already.

3-1/2 years later, Paul Hudson, the climate correspondent (at least for now) at no less than the previously climate koolaid-poisoned BBC, without naming him, is acknowledging the correctness (HT Instapundit) of Carter's observations. The Beeb reporter also concludes .... brace for it .... that "it seems the debate about what is causing global warming is far from over." Imagine that.

As I've been writing for years, "Consensus, conschmensus."

Here are selected paragraphs from Hudson's report:

As if the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (Fan and Fred) crackups weren't bad enough, IBDeditorials.com noted on Thursday evening that another bad-mortgage shoe is about to drop. This time it's at the Federal Housing Authority (FHA).

First, let's revisit Fan and Fred to remind readers just how complete the disaster has been at these decades in the making Democratic crony-controlled entities.

A little-noticed CNNMoney.com item by Chris Isidore in late July told us what the original announced loss estimate had been a year earlier (bolds are mine throughout this post):

When Congress was debating the bailout of Fannie and Freddie last July (of 2008), the official estimate from the Congressional Budget Office was that a bailout would most likely cost taxpayers $25 billion, with only a 5% chance of the price tag reaching $100 billion between them.

Isidiore then noted that just one year later the loss estimate had doubled:

Today, Joe Scarborough continued his feud with Rush Limbaugh, insinuating that the talk radio legend is not a true conservative.

For the second time today, I’m looking ‘round the office, wondering whether I’m being punked.

Hot on the heels of Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize – won for the stellar achievements (?) of the first ten days of his presidency –  we find out that Joe Scarborough believes himself to be the only true heir to the mantle of Reagan and Buckley – at least, among the radio talker set.  

On this morning’s edition of Morning Joe, Scarborough and the Brew Crew had the following exchange:

CNN correspondent Allan Chernoff highlighted New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s hidden camera operation against gun shows in several states on Thursday’s American Morning, but omitted any sound bites from gun rights supporters. Chernoff featured two clips from Bloomberg and one from NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly, but only read an excerpt from a statement by the NRA.

Anchors Kiran Chetry and John Roberts introduced the correspondent’s report, which ran 11 minutes into the 6 am Eastern hour. Chetry summarized that the mayor’s “undercover sting operation in three states appears to catch gun show dealers selling weapons to buyers who admit that they could not pass a background check.” Roberts continued that Bloomberg claims that “this so-called gun show loophole is making it easier for criminals to get their hands on weapons.”

CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer highlighted the latest study from the Center for Science in the Public Interest during a news brief on Tuesday’s Situation, but omitted the left-wing bent of the organization, referring to it as merely an “activist watchdog group.”

The CSPI released their “Ten Riskiest Foods Regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug and Administration” earlier in the day, and the CNN anchor noted that these edible items are “some of the healthiest foods all of us could eat, but according to an activist watchdog group, they could still make us all of us sick.” He continued with a summary of the organization’s findings, including a paraphrase of the study’s title: “Researchers say leafy greens, eggs, tuna, oysters and potatoes are among the top ten riskiest foods regulated by the FDA.”

An important Boston Globe story by Farah Stockman on the State Department's defunding of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center (IHRDC) has been noted at Hot Air, the Corner, and Instapundit.

The Globe's subheadline at the story's web page is revealing:

US funds dry up for Iran rights watchdog
Obama White House less confrontational

.... But just as the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center was ramping up to investigate abuses of protesters after this summer’s disputed presidential election, the group received word that - for the first time since it was formed - its federal funding request had been denied.

“If there is one time that I expected to get funding, this was it," said Rene Redman, the group’s executive director, who had asked for $2.7 million in funding for the next two years. "I was surprised, because the world was watching human rights violations right there on television."

Many see the sudden, unexplained cutoff of funding as a shift by the Obama administration away from high-profile democracy promotion in Iran ....

If you thought figuring out what to eat was difficult before, the Center for Science in the Public Interest has released a new study called "The Ten Riskiest Foods," which slams four of the five food groups.

On Oct. 6 "Good Morning America's" Sharyn Alfonsi devoted an entire segment to the doom-and-gloom study. But of course she conveniently forgot to mention that CSPI is a radical left-wing kill-joy consumer group that has attacked everything from remote controls to washing machines to Chinese food to casual dining.

The study was discussed in relation to a recent New York Times headline about the 22-year-old girl Stephanie Smith who was paralyzed apparently from E. coli in a frozen hamburger.

In his latest push for a health care overhaul bill, President Obama spoke to doctors in the White House Rose Garden yesterday. Painting a nice picture of the event were many media outlets that neglected to mention the White House's doctoring (forgive the pun) of the audience in an attempt at a powerful photo-op.

Doctors attending the event were instructed to show up in white lab coats to give observers the feeling that doctors stand behind the President's health care plans.

"White Coats in the Rose Garden, as Obama Rallies Doctors on Health Overhaul," read a New York Times blog post headline. "The roughly 150 doctors assembled wore white lab coats under the brilliant fall sun," the Washington Post recalled. The San Francisco Chronicle wrote, "Obama faced rows of smiling doctors, all wearing white lab coats." NBC News also noted the white coats donned by the doctors in attendance.

In early July, following the very first month after Chrysler LLC emerged from bankruptcy, the Associated Press, in an unbylined report about changes in the company's board, saved this little nugget for the last of its eight paragraphs:

Chrysler's poor June performance also casts doubt on whether the U.S. government's $7 billion allocation will be enough to get the automaker through the U.S. sales slump, which is projected to last into next year.

Those doubts are growing. In a report on Chrysler's just-announced management shakeup, AP auto writers Tom Krisher and Dee-Ann Durbin began their report by ringing the alarm (bolds are mine):

With sales down sharply and pressure to start generating cash before government loans run out, Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne shook up his executive team Monday, replacing two of his brand managers after just four months and splitting Dodge into car and truck units.

Oh, the establishment press will just loooooove this -- not.

From BigGovernment.com (HT Mark Levin over the airwaves this evening):

Beverly Gossage, Research Fellow for Show-Me Institute and founder of HSA Benefits Consulting wondered which insurance companies rejected the most claims. She found her answer in the AMA’s own 2008 National Health Insurer Report Card (fairly large PDF).

I'm curious. Was it Aetna? Humana?

A chart showing the major carriers and how Medicare compared to them in the study follows:

Based on the data, the current job situation for teenagers in America is the worst on record.

According to Uncle Sam's Bureau of Labor Statistics:

• Seasonally adjusted teenage unemployment hit 25.9%. That is the highest rate in the nearly 62 years BLS has been reporting this number. The previous record was last month's 25.5%. The record before that was 24.1% in November and December of 1982. A graphic of the complete history of the teenage unemployment rate that will open in a new window is here.
• Unemployment among black teens not enrolled in school is over 50%.
• The rate among 20-24 year-olds is also alarmingly high at 15.1%.

Almost alone among establishment media publications -- and even then in an editorial, not a regular news report -- the Wall Street Journal commented on this distressing set of circumstances, identified the most likely cause of the problem, and worried about its longer-term consequences:

Those who read the New York Times's coverage of the unsuccessful results of Barack and Michelle Obama's attempt to seal the 2016 Summer Olympics bid for Chicago on Friday afternoon ('For Obama, an Unsuccessful Campaign") might want to read it again.

If it doesn't seem the same, it's because it isn't.

Blogger Weasel Zippers (HT Hot Air Headlines via Instapundit) caught the Times committing a major scrub of the story. But it's really worse than that.

An excerpt of the item's first five paragraphs posted at FreeRepublic at 4:44 Eastern Time on October 2 shows that the article was apparently originally published under the same title with Peter Baker's byline sometime Friday afternoon.

There are even more substantive differences noticed by Weasel Zippers I will get to shortly, but the first five paragraphs alone were obviously worked over, while Jeff Zeleny's name was added to the byline.

After the jump, on the left you will see the original as excerpted at FreeRepublic; on the right are the first five paragraphs currently at the Times web site (saved here at my host for future reference; click here or on the graphic to view a larger side-by-side version in a separate window):

Reviewing September's detailed sales results in the car business carried at the Wall Street Journal, three things stick out immediately:

• The awful performance at General Motors -- down 45% from September 2008.
• Chrysler's even worse performance -- down "only" 42% from September 2008, but a mind-boggling 61% from September 2007 (62,197 in 2009, 156,799 in 2007)
• Ford's tiny decline of only 6% from a year ago, despite the end of the Cash For Clunkers program in August.

No other major maker had a year-over-year September decline that was even half of that seen at GM or Chrysler.

Yet the press, while beginning to acknowledge serious problems at the companies, both of which were first bailed out by the government and then taken through government-orchestrated, contract law-violating, UAW-favoring bankruptcies (GM discussed here, Chrysler here), still will not entertain the possibility, despite the evidence, that consumers are shunning them because of their bailed-out status and their heavy-handed tactics in bankruptcy.

What follows are excerpts from three reports that covered September's industry results.

Of all the ignorant, boot-licking interviews in Chris Matthews' long career, this one may be the most hypocritical.

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), he of  "die quickly" YouTube fame, appeared on the October 2 edition of MSNBC's "Hardball," and Matthews wasted no time in teeing up the GOP for Grayson:

CHRIS MATTHEWS: I'm looking for some insight here. I'm a reporter. I'm trying to find out what you know and what you don't know. When you walk around the floor. When you walk past the Republican cloak room. When you get on the elevator.  When you get on the subway over there in the Capitol building. Do these Republicans come up to you and say your number is up, buddy?  What do they say to you?

CNN’s Rick Sanchez joined two of his colleagues in omitting the left-wing affiliation of Wendell Potter, a senior fellow at the Center for Media and Democracy. In fact, Sanchez went so far as to deny Potter’s alignment with liberals: “Is he [Potter] some crazy lefty? Is he Ralph Nader? Is he Dennis Kucinich? No. In fact, he’s a former player in the health insurance world.”

Before the CNN anchor made this denial about Potter, he read the senior fellow’s assessment of Senator Max Baucus’s health care “reform” proposal: “Here’s what my next guest thinks of this Baucus bill- quote, ‘It’s hard to imagine how insurance companies could have written legislation,’ he says- ‘that would benefit them more.’ In other words, if the guys who run the insurance companies would have sat down and written legislation- he says- they couldn’t have written it any better.”

Sanchez then made his introduction of his guest: “Who’s my guest? Is he some crazy lefty? Is he Ralph Nader? Is he Dennis Kucinich? No. In fact, he’s a former player in the health insurance world. He used to be a part of it. You ever heard of Cigna? Of course, you’ve heard of Cigna. They’re one of the biggest insurers in the whole world. Wendell Potter is who I’m talking about, and for 15 years he was the company’s chief corporate spokesperson, and he was also an executive with Humana as well.” He didn’t mention Potter’s current position with the Center for Media and Democracy during the interview, though an on-screen graphic did mention it (see above).

In the news today, the President and Oprah attempt to snag the Olympics from Rio, a Congressman yells something dumb on the floor of the House (not a Republican!), and double standards abound.  

Meanwhile, back on the Hill, there's a humble bill involving the entire health care system of the United States making its way through the Senate.  Lawrence O'Donnell is not usually so honest and brazen about the liberal agenda as he was during this morning's appearance on MSNBC's “Morning Joe”, but one can certainly be thankful that he was.

According to O'Donnell, there are now three new tax brackets in this legislation, a new 35% tax rate on certain private health insurance plans, and half of the health care legislation now being debated is a massive new tax bill.  O'Donnell made the following comparison:

Hours after the Senate Finance Committee rejected the public option as part of the proposed health care “reform” plan, CNN’s Campbell Brown couldn’t seem to find any conservatives to discuss the vote on her program on Tuesday. Her discussion segment brought three liberals to the table- former Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich, Roland Martin, and senior political analyst Gloria Borger.

Brown first turned to Borger, who flatly stated that she thought the public option is dead: “I think it’s pretty dead, Campbell. I think it’s safe to say that right now it looks like it’s a goner.” The analyst continued that “the President has to settle for something less- something that may be a down payment on a public option, if the insurance companies don’t behave themselves. So, I think the President’s going to have to settle for less, and I think he’s signaling that he will settle for less.”

The Politico's Jonathan Allen reported last night that Democratic Congressment Alan Grayson of Florida let loose on the House floor. (UPDATE: Politico now has a YouTube video of Grayson's performance at the link.)

Hopefully, Allen himself was only being sloppy with his own wording:

Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., warned Americans that "Republicans want you to die quickly" during an after-hours House floor speech Tuesday night.

His remarks, which drew angry and immediate calls for an apology from Republicans, were highlighted by a sign reading "The Republican Health Care Plan: Die Quickly."

"Warned"? As if "Republicans want you to die quickly" is a fact?

What follows, via Politico's Glenn Thrush, is what you can't say about a President:

In a great NewsBusters post early this morning, Rusty Weiss wondered how much local media coverage there has been of ACORN's suspension of services, and focused on potential vote fraud in Albany and Troy, New York.

Here's a question local reporters looking for an angle should be asking, even in the somewhat unlikely event they can't find anything corrupt or criminal at the ACORN office in their town: How effective is the organization's outreach?

Based on what little I've learned, a more legitimate question might be, "Is ACORN's so-called outreach really just a facade to conceal other not well-known activities it really considers more important"?

The issue first occurred to me when I read a September 18 report by WCPO in Cincinnati (WCPO apparently stands for "We Constantly Promote Obama") about the office's decision to suspend services (bolds are mine):

The headline and the first paragraph from this Friday Wall Street Journal report by Josh Mitchell and Stephen Power reads like a bad joke Jay Leno's writers would have discarded, because no one would believe it. The second paragraph isn't much better:

Gore-Backed Car Firm Gets Large U.S. Loan

A tiny car company backed by former Vice President Al Gore has just gotten a $529 million U.S. government loan to help build a hybrid sports car in Finland that will sell for about $89,000.

The award this week to California startup Fisker Automotive Inc. follows a $465 million government loan to Tesla Motors Inc., purveyors of a $109,000 British-built electric Roadster. Tesla is a California startup focusing on all-electric vehicles, with a number of celebrity endorsements that is backed by investors that have contributed to Democratic campaigns.

That's a combined total of just shy of a billion dollars going to two companies currently making toys for the wealthy under circumstantially suspect conditions.

The New York Times announced today that it would appoint an editor to monitor 'opinion media'. In an attempt to respond to criticism that it has been too slow to pick up on stories first reported by conservative blogs and talk show hosts, the Times acknowledged poor coverage, but denied a political agenda.

The self-proclaimed 'paper of record' was extremely slow in picking up on two recent stories. The first, the 'trutherism' of former White House Green Jobs Czar Van Jones, was initially reported by Pajamas Media, and later by Glenn Beck on his Fox News talk show. The Times did not cover the story until after Jones had resigned.

Later, the Times neglected to report on the undercover sting operation that exposed ACORN for offering assistance in a bogus child prostitution ring. The Times reported on Congress's votes to de-fund ACORN, but neglected to mention the sting operation that inspired the votes.