Bias by Omission

On Wednesday, the Associated Press's Andrew Taylor covered the latest deficit projections released by the Congressional Budget Office. In his treatment of the predicted unemployment rate, Taylor betrayed no concern whatsoever about the plight of the millions of unemployed who are in that position largely because the Obama administration attempted to bring about an economic recovery through…

To add an exclamation point to Brad Wilmouth's great post last night ("ABC Pushes for Tax Hike on Capital Gains, Ignores Likelihood of Tax Revenue Loss") -- in ignoring the likelihood that raising the capital gains tax rate would reduce capital gains tax collections, the network also "somehow" forgot now-retired World News Tonight anchor Charles Gibson's aggressive questioning on the topic…

Ten days ago, on the eve of the House vote to repeal ObamaCare, Kathleen Sebelius's Department or Health and Human Services issued a fearmongering press release saying that "129 million Americans with a pre-existing condition could be denied coverage without new health reform law." Ten days later, on a Friday afternoon (naturally), the Associated Press's Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar finally got…

It seems that Associated Press Business Writer David K. Randall made a bad call yesterday. But he only has himself to blame for engaging in what he should have known was wishful thinking. Shortly after the government's report on economic growth during the fourth quarter of 2010 came in with an annualized 3.2% reading, Randall put out this this short report: Stocks edge up after stronger…

New York Times critic Michael Kimmelman was granted the front page of Wednesday’s Arts section for a snobbish chiding of uncouth American conservatives who helped squelch a video some found sacrilegious, by a featured artist in a Smithsonian gay art exhibit: “In Britain, Separation of Art and State.” ("Separation" except for when it comes to actually subsidizing the art, which Britain does…

On Wednesday's CBS Evening News, anchor Katie Couric proclaimed: "The federal commission that investigated the financial meltdown has reportedly concluded it could have been avoided. The New York Times says a report due out tomorrow finds plenty of fault to go around, including mismanagement by corporations and lax regulation by the government." Couric made sure to point out: "The report…

To those who follow the news fairly closely and look at underlying reports, CNN's email alerts are sometimes entertaining. Much less frequently are the accurate and informative. Even though they tend not to realize it, those who don't follow the news closely and attempt to stay informed by relying on CNN's alerts are regularly deceived by the network that used to call itself "the most trusted…

As it turns out, mainstream media outlets that lauded President Barack Obama's State of the Union speech as "downright Reaganesque" might be on to something. While ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and MSNBC exalted the commander-in-chief, at least one observer charged the Democratic president with crafting a speech that was "tantamount to plagiarism." In a column on the U.S. News site, presidential…

None of the broadcast news programs from Monday evening and Tuesday morning covered the 2011 "March for Life" in Washington, DC, a pro-life rally that reportedly drew at least tens of thousands of attendees. Neither NBC, ABC, nor CBS gave any coverage Monday to the march on their respective evening news programs; none of the networks covered the story Tuesday morning. The New York Times did…

CNN's 7 pm Eastern hour program John King USA was the only program on Monday and the following morning on Tuesday that mentioned the March for Life in Washington, DC. Anchor John King devoted only 11 seconds to the pro-life demonstration, and omitted crowd numbers and footage from the March. CNN.com's write-up on the annual event downplayed the number of attendees as merely in the "thousands…

On Sunday evening, an event in Washington preemptively made mincemeat of the usual press claims that "thousands" would participate in the next day's March for Life. The next day at the Washington Post, Michelle Boorstein and Ben Pershing followed form ("Thousands of abortion opponents rally in march on Mall"), but did make an interesting, seemingly reluctant observation: "Some attending the…

In a Monday Associated Press dispatch, reporter Tom Krisher virtually celebrated the idea that Government/General Motors "may be Number 1 again," with happy talk of "dethroning" and "overtaking" Toyota. Nowhere did Krisher mention the inconvenient fact that Toyota's revenues dwarf GM's to the point where comparing unit sales is an absurd waste of time. Specifically:

Last Wednesday I wrote about a left-wing anti-Wal-Mart group in Washington, D.C. that published a flyer depicting a crosshairs on the Wal-Mart smiley face icon and called for a "march on the developer's house" in Northwest D.C. after dark on Thursday the 20th. [That flyer has since been scrubbed from the WalMartFreeDC.org website, but you can see a screen capture of it below the page break…

In an Associated Press report by Patrick Walters yesterday afternoon, the following two reasons were offered as to why the Philadelphia abortion "clinic" operated by Dr. Kermit Gosnell, who was arrested and charged earlier this week "with murdering seven babies and one woman who went to him for an abortion," had not been inspected since 1993: Democratic former Governor Ed Rendell, who left…