Bias by Omission

Earlier this evening, the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism issued its report on Rolling Stone Magazine's November "A Rape on Campus" story. The report follows up on the magazine's request of Columbia to conduct an independent review of how the disastrously false 9,000-word story made it through to publication. USA Today is reporting that for all the harsh criticism the piece's…

NBC became the first network to move on from the scandal involving Democratic Senator Robert Menendez (N.J.) on Thursday as NBC Nightly News made zero mention of the story and that entered a plea of not guilty in a Newark, New Jersey federal courtroom. As fellow networks ABC and CBS, ABC’s World News Tonight aired a one-minute-and-25-second segment on Menendez while the CBS Evening News devoted a…

Update, April 3: The Indiana man who claims to have been hacked now admits that he wasn't, but says he was "joking" about robbing Memories Pizza, and is threatening to sue those who exposed his (ahem) public comments.  Those of us following the Memories Pizza story won't have trouble remembering it as the years go by, thanks only partially to the Walkerton, Indiana store's fairly unusual name…

A short unbylined Associated Press report at its national site on the situation at Memories Pizza in Walkerton, Indiana this afternoon made sure to mention that the pizzeria "won't cater gay weddings" (in the headline). It also misstated the owner's statement to a South Bend TV station, claiming, using its own words, that she "said the state's new religious objections law backs their right to…

CNN's Wolf Blitzer utilized a regular liberal media double standard on Wednesday's AC360: giving a liberal guest the kid glove treatment, while tossing tougher questions at a conservative – in this case, Mollie Hemingway of The Federalist website. When Hemingway underlined how Religious Freedom Restoration Acts have protected Sikhs and Native Americans, Blitzer countered,  "But Mollie, you're…

On Wednesday, the Department of Justice announced it would not be seeking contempt charges against Lois Lerner for refusing to testify to Congress on the IRS targeting scandal. The Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) networks, so far, have refused to report on this big development in the Obama IRS scandal that they apparently just don’t want to talk about any more.  

On Monday, as has been their habit going back at least to the Clinton administration, Investor's Business Daily's editorialists once again broke a story the establishment press likely could have reported years ago. IBD revealed that the Obama administration "was secretly negotiating the Taliban Five's release without (Bowe) Bergdahl." IBD reasonably believes that coming up with any reason to get…

On March 18, Associated Press Religion Writer Rachel Zoll covered the decision by the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) "recognizing gay marriage as Christian in the church constitution after decades of debate over same-sex relationships." A search at the AP's national site indicates that the wire service hasn't done a story on the U.S. congregation since then. This means that it has ignored a…

Is the Republican party a political organization or “a terrarium of retrograde fauna”? Both, suggests Esquire’s Pierce, and if too few of the American people understand that, it’s in large part a result of, in his words, “the worst episode of journalistic malpractice that I can recall.” What set Pierce off was a remark from a former Democratic congressional staffer, quoted in the newspaper The…

On Tuesday night, ABC and CBS declined to cover the latest in the Hillary Clinton e-mail scandal as the House Select Committee on Benghazi requested a private meeting with the former Secretary of State while a separate deadline concerning her e-mail server approaches. Days after the committee requested Clinton turn her private e-mail server over to an independent party for review, the panel…

The press won't roast New York Governor Andrew Cuomo for this, but it should — at a very high temperature. Today, Mr. Self-Righteous, who in the past has suggested that anyone who is pro-life, against same-sex marriage, or for the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment as written and adjudicated should leave his state, banned all "non-essential" state travel to Indiana, home of a recently enacted…

Reporter Julie Hirschfeld Davis penned a hypocritical tribute to the late Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts in Tuesday's New York Times: "Praising a Senate Mentor, and the Example He Set." Davis was marking President Obama' speech in Boston at the opening of the Edward M. Kennedy Institute, previously hailed in theTimes. Not even one "liberal" label managed to squeak in to Davis's tribute to (…

On Sunday on CNN's State of the Union, Dana Bash, while interviewing Texas Senator and GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz, attempted to compare his alleged lack of experience to that of Barack Obama when he declared his candidacy in 2007. It did not go well for her. It's a mystery why Bash might have thought that Cruz wouldn't have an answer for her faux concerns, but he did, and he hit her…

UPDATE, March 31: This morning in an email, the AP's Lederman pointed me to a Saturday afternoon "Big Story" item time-stamped the day before the report to which this blog post below links. For whatever reason, that earlier "Big Story" item has more detail than what appears, despite the Sunday time stamp, to be Lederman's original report posted at the AP's national site. In that "Big Story" item…