Bias by Omission

In one of a virtually endless stream of such examples, a Monday Associated Press report by Elaine Ganley and Greg Keller on challenges facing newly elected French Prime Minister, Socialist Francois Hollande, described him as "the leftist who has pledged to buck Europe's austerity trend." What a deceptive joke. Europe's attempt at "austerity" can't be a "trend," because it hasn't even started…

The news Monday of a thwarted al-Qaeda plot to place another explosive device modeled on the "underwear bomb" that failed on Christmas Day 2009 might make a news consumer wonder: What ever happened to that terrorist, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab? On February 16, he was sentenced to life in prison for his attempt at mass murder. Did you miss it? The networks weren't very interested. Only ABC's…

Monday's CBS This Morning brought on former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich to brush off the effect of French socialist Francois Hollande's election on the world economy, despite the immediate decline in global stock markets: "I don't think there's really much danger." Anchor Erica Hill had asked the pundit if there was "a danger in throwing off the French economy and the ripple effect…

The last national press reports on the five men arrested Monday for plotting to blow up a Cleveland-area bridge reassured everyone that none involved were in responsible roles in the Occupy movement. On Thursday, the Associated Press's Thomas J. Sheeran wrote that Occupy Cleveland spokespersons "said the men were associated with the group but didn't represent Occupy Cleveland or its non-violent…

It is more than a little odd that each of the three wire services identified in today's earlier post (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), in reporting on yesterday's OMG-awful jobs report, somehow failed to mention something about the data presented. Specifically, at Bloomberg, Reuters, and the Associated Press (here and here), five reporters in four stories somehow avoided using two truly required…

CNN's Anderson Cooper twice nailed Democrats in the last week for falsely accusing Republicans of waging war on women's health, but the three major networks either ignored the story (ABC) or skimmed over the details without fact-checking the Democratic accusations (CBS, NBC). Cooper aired a critical "Keeping Them Honest" report on April 27 and another one on Thursday May 3, refuting…

Well, we can all stop thinking about the presidential election, because Barack Obama's victory is assured. This morning, Paul Wiseman at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, virtually celebrated analysts' predictions that the unemployment rate will drop a whole 0.3% between now and Election Day to 7.9%. But in searching desperately for a precedent, he claimed that a public…

First came the play honoring liberal Texas Gov. Ann Richards. Now comes the play honoring leftist Texas columnist Molly Ivins, played by....Kathleen Turner? She’ll be getting her frump on. But The Washington Post couldn’t put an L word on either of these ladies. “Kathleen Turner will star in Arena Stage’s production of ‘Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins,’ by Margaret and…

On Monday, CBSNews.com's Lucy Madison bizarrely included Vice President Biden as one of the Obama campaign's "most popular surrogates" as she highlighted First Lady Michelle Obama's 69 percent approval rating, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll. However, Madison didn't point out that Biden's approval ratings in two polls earlier in 2012 lag far behind Mrs. Obama. The online…

New York Times campaign reporter Ashley Parker looks back semi-fondly at Mitt Romney's apparently successful run for the Republican nomination in her Sunday "news analysis," "A Romney Rambler Looks Back." The people who said that this race was boring and that it couldn’t possibly compete with the excitement and stature of 2008 may yet be right. But they, too, will be back out on the trail.…

At the New York Times on Saturday (in Sunday's print edition), reporters Charles Duhigg and David Kocienewski, in a report riddled with conceptual flaws and misleading statistics, bemoaned "how technology giants have taken advantage of tax codes written for an industrial age and ill suited to today’s digital economy." They focused their attention almost entirely on Apple, seemingly in…

On Friday evening, it was Christopher Rugaber and Paul Wiseman. Today it's Martin Crutsinger. Together with Derek Kravitz (who isn't in on the latest offense -- yet), perhaps the just-named quartet of alleged journalists should be named "The Four Distortsmen." Today, it was Crutsinger who, in the wake of a mediocre report on consumer spending, again invoked "government budget-cutting as the…

Tim Carney has an excellent post this morning at the Washington Examiner about how the media are reluctant to note the reason that Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng -- who is believed , but not confirmed, to be in hiding in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing -- is in hot water with the Communist government. Chen "has exposed the horrors of China’s one-child policy, including forced abortions and…

A week ago, National Journal's Michael Hirsh quoted an unnamed State Department official who claimed that "The war on terror is over. Now that we have killed most of al Qaida, now that people have come to see legitimate means of expression, people who once might have gone into al Qaida see an opportunity for a legitimate Islamism." If it's so over, then why were government officials referenced…