Bias by Omission

Following Hillary Clinton’s latest flip-flop and move to the left in opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the CBS Evening News saw no interest in informing their viewers of this announcement after she strongly backed it while secretary of state in President Barack Obama’s first term. In contrast, both ABC’s World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News surprisingly stepped up to the plate to cover…

Over at the Associated Press, Andrew Taylor, contrary to the wire service's usual practice, referenced a pre-official Congressional Budget Office report to tout the federal government's "improved" budget deficit. The CBO estimates that the deficit, which won't become official until the Treasury Department releases its final Monthly Treasury Statement of the fiscal year in the next week or two,…

Following the lead of Tuesday’s Today show, NBC Nightly News continued its offensive against 2016 Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio for his attendance record in the U.S. Senate (despite previous precedent) and warned that his rise in the polls could result in Rubio suffering the same fate as failed candidate Scott Walker. 

CNN wasn't interested in balance on Tuesday, as three straight programs brought on pro-euthanasia activists to tout California's new "End of Life Option Act," which was signed into law on Monday. All three also left out opponents of the legislation. CNN Newsroom featured a man whose wife was the subject of a HBO documentary titled How to Die in Oregon. On At This Hour, Kate Bolduan hyped the "…

Items found at the Associated Press, the New York Times and the Washington Post, in reporting that President Obama plans to visit Roseburg, Oregon later this week, have all failed to report that community leaders have said that his visit is not welcome. The 4:10 p.m. PT (7:10 PM ET) entry at a running timeline at AP announced that "Barack Obama will travel to Oregon this week to visit privately…

The “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC pulled out all the stops on Monday night to carry water for 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, proclaiming that she’s “on fire” with “new wind in her sails” as she “unveil[ed] a tough new stance on gun control” and came “out swinging today at the Benghazi Committee.”

Poor Gary Legum at Salon.com. How dare supporters of the right to keep and bear arms as clearly defined in the Constitution's Second Amendment push back against the gun control movement's cynical exploitation of Thursday's Roseburg, Oregon massacre? Legum is outraged that "The right tells us (again) to ignore the elephant in the room." He must mean the fact that the area in question at Umpqua…

CNN's Alisyn Camerota touted Hillary Clinton's new gun control proposals during an interview of former Governor Mike Huckabee on Monday's New Day. Camerota pointed out Mrs. Clinton's "tighten the gun show Internet sales loophole" idea, and asserted, "Isn't that one a no-brainer?" She then asked, "Shouldn't there be universal background checks, and people not be able to buy guns online? Are you…

Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro presides over a country which is falling apart thanks to the socialist policies of his government and that of his predecessor Hugo Chavez. The Economist describes the period since Chavez took over in 1998 as that of "authoritarian misrule" characterized by "by shortages of everything from poultry to pharmaceuticals, by inflation approaching 200% and by rampant…

In their coverage of government and other economic reports, the business press routinely tells readers that the figures they are relaying are "seasonally adjusted." That is, raw results are smoothed out to supposedly "remove normal, recurring variations" in data. There's one notable exception: The government's monthly employment report.

On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at the United Nations. As described by George Jahn at the Associated Press, it was "an impassioned speech interspersed with bouts of dramatic silence." Jahn failed to report the absence of U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power and Secretary of State John Kerry. So did Rick Gladstone and Judi Rudoren at the New York Times. An unbylined Reuters…

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush was blasted by the New York Times for allegedly dismissing the mass killings by a gunman at an Oregon community college as "stuff happens." The Times then invited President Obama to lambaste Bush's out-of-context two words in a Saturday print story. (Meanwhile, true Democratic gaffe-masters like Joe Biden get an "off-the-cuff" pass from the newspaper.)…

Although it was very disappointing, the September Employment Situation Summary, which told us that the economy added only 142,000 seasonally adjusted jobs as hundreds of thousands of Americans withdrew from the labor force, was not the worst economy-related news of the day. That dubious honor belongs to the Census Bureau's Factory Orders report. At least the employment report showed more people…