Bias by Omission

Searches at the Associated Press, the New York Times and the Washington Post for stories in English on "monarca," the Spanish term for the monarch butterfly, currently come up empty. (There is a Post story in Spanish originating with the Associated Press, but it's about a drop in the number of those butterflies present in Mexico.) This absence isn't due to a lack of interest in the butterfly. It'…

In a press release published on Tuesday, Humana, one of the United States’ largest health insurers, announced that it will be withdrawing from all Obamacare exchanges come 2018. According to The Hill, “The insurer said it would offer plans through 2017, but that the market has not stabilized enough to participate next year. Humana said it was losing money from taking on too many sick people…

In his opening monologue and first guest conversation Monday evening, Fox News's Bill O'Reilly sharply criticized the national and local press coverage of the past week's immigration raids. In his Talking Points Memo opener, O'Reilly observed the press's utter failure to headline the fact that the raids targeted criminal illegal aliens, describing that failure not as press bias, but as "blatant…

The New York Post, though usually perceived as a right-leaning newspaper, has room for columnists from the "other side" — including selective and truth-challenged ones like Jennifer Wright. Wright's February 11 column covers "some of the most gruesome plagues" in human history, in the process promoting a new book that is quite a departure from her previous ventures "covering sex and dating." Much…

During Monday evening’s World News Tonight, ABC let it be known that they are distressed by the increase in sweeps being conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement under President Donald Trump. “There are new images coming in this evening of the sweeps, undocumented immigrants detained facing deportation now,” announced anchor David Muir as he touted the efforts of “Senate Democratic Leader…

As the old saying goes, ‘never let the facts stand in the way of a good story.’ The Big Three networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) did just that Monday night when they pounced on claims made on social media that President Donald Trump and his national security team discussed details of the North Korean missile test in public. They gleefully read the Facebook posts of a man who was in the dining room with…

Elizabeth Warren has become a heroine of the establishment press and the left — but I repeat myself — after deliberately violating Senate Rule 19 against "imput(ing) to another Senator or to other Senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a Senator" Tuesday evening in criticizing Trump administration Attorney General nominee Jeff Sessions. The Massachusetts Democrat's bitter, ugly…

Throughout the day on Friday, CNN touted video of angry protesters at congressional Republican town halls in Tennessee and Utah to prove that it might be the emergence of a possible “tea party of the left.” In the process, it showed a stunning dose of sudden respect after how they and their media cohorts treated the tea party when it arrived on scene in 2009 and 2010.

What a difference a decade and a different political party make. In November 2005, Ohio GOP Congresswoman Jean Schmidt used the same "I'm just quoting someone else" technique to criticize a fellow Member which Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren employed earlier this week to criticize since-confirmed Donald Trump Attorney General nominee Jeff Sessions. Schmidt was vilified to the…

The Big Three networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) had a field day Thursday in the wake of the deportation of a Mexican woman, Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos, from Phoenix, Arizona. “An undocumented woman at the center of an immigration uproar has now been deported after 21 years living in the U.S., she was arrested yesterday and shipped back to Mexico today,” announced anchor Lester Holt on NBC Nightly News…

Katrina Vanden Heuvel, publisher of The Nation, went off on John McCain in an ill-advised, unhinged Wednesday morning tweet, declaring the decorated Navy veteran and former Vietnam prisoner of war an "armchair warrior." As best can be determined, vandenHeuvel is upset that the Arizona senator and 2008 Republican presidential candidate has previously stated that if Russia did indeed meddle in the…

Late Thursday evening, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a stay on President Donald Trump’s travel ban executive order effectively keeping it from taking effect. Every network in the Big Three (ABC, CBS, and NBC) led their evening news programs with the development, but ABC came off as exceptionally hyped. “Good evening, and we begin with that breaking news here tonight,” announced anchor…

In a hilarious case of irony, The 11th Hour host and serial liar Brian Williams teed up guest Charlie Sykes on Tuesday to lambaste conservative media (like the one you’re reading) for being why no one trusts mainstream media in the age of Trump and alternative facts. 

People will believe silly things when it fits their ideological preconceptions. Even when they have been debunked and are contradicted by first-hand information and news reports. A handful of mostly left-leaning publications repeated a British tabloid’s wild claim that Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch started a “fascism forever club” in high school. This bizarre smear of Gorsuch was debunked by…