Bias by Omission

There are many annoying aspects of the sea change in media coverage of the economy since Barack Obama became president. At or near the top of the list is how the business press has downplayed the unprecedented housing industry disaster, while lowering the bar that will supposedly represent a real recovery to ridiculous levels. According the the Census Bureau (12-page PDF), 23,000 new homes…

Imagine the (justifiable) media and other outcry that would result if a previous presidential administration and congressional leadership had convinced gullible House and Senate members to pass a law which they weren't given time to read specifying the following about a new Military Spending Board. First, the Board appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate) sets a predetermined (…

The seemingly endless variety of "name that party" stunts has yet another wrinkle. In this case, Matt Drudge is currently linking to a Des Moines Register story ("Culver OKs state pay raises"; also saved here at host for future reference) about how outgoing Iowa Governor Chet Culver has decided to rush through union contracts granting thousands of state employees 3% raises (before considering…

A couple of NewsBusters posts during the past week -- one from yours truly and another courtesy of Ken Shepherd -- have pointed to the press's reluctance to identify the Democratic Party affiliations of indicted Prince George's County Executive Jack Johnson and his also-indicted wife Leslie, who is a County Council member. Today, the Associated Press's Brian Witte kept up the wire service's…

On Thursday, I noted (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog) that the Associated Press's Marty Crutsinger and Chris Rugaber worked very hard to gloss over October's horrid housing market news as reflected in the Census Bureau's reports on housing starts and building permits. That's bad enough. But a Tuesday report covering the latest release of the Housing Market Index (HMI) by the National…

I owe Ottmar Edenhofer thanks for two things. First, I am grateful that Edenhofer, a German economist who is "co-chair of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Working Group III on Mitigation of Climate Change," has a last name on which searching is easy. I quickly determined that his name last name doesn't currently come up in searches at the Associated Press's main web…

Persistent pursuit of a story by journalists has in all too many cases been replaced by a dogged determination to keep politically incorrect facts out of important stories. An Associated Press item out of Grand Island, Nebraska this morning illustrates this point. It's not very difficult to identify aspects of the story reporter Josh Funk worked mightily to leave out (bolded items hinting at…

In a Tuesday item, the Politico's David Catanese reported on the results of an interview he had (HT to Third Base Politics) with outgoing Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, who was defeated by Republican John Kasich earlier this month. It was billed as "his first one-on-one interview since his loss," the first for a sitting Ohio governor in 36 years, so you would think anything particularly…

Gosh, what's a bigger story -- that to the extent it was ever happening at all the housing recovery "seems to have been aborted," or that according to the government there was very little inflation in October?

The media seems to take an exceptional interest in Senator Lisa Murkowski when she’s uttering liberal talking points on ‘compromise’ or when she’s blasting Sarah Palin as being ‘not worldly enough’ for the office of the Presidency.  Case in point, as NewsBuster Brad Wilmouth pointed out, CBS recently highlighted Murkowski’s claim that she believes Palin lacks the ‘intellectual curiosity’ to…

MSNBC's prime-time "town hall" on immigration reform yesterday exemplified one of the more unseemly elements of media bias: brazen political advocacy disguised as an "honest conversation." Attempting to pass itself off as a forum for voices on all sides of the immigration issue to elevate the dialogue, "Beyond Borderlines" featured droves of liberal guests who dismissed, admonished, and…

Yesterday the California Supreme Court ruled "that illegal immigrants are entitled to the same in-state tuition breaks that are offered to citizens who attend public colleges and universities." The Associated Press reports that "[t]he high court unanimously upheld a state law that says any student, regardless of immigration status, who attended a California high school for at least three…

New York Times reporter James McKinley Jr., who last garnered the Times Watch spotlight for cheering on the Democratic candidate for governor of Texas, returns on Monday with a dismissive story on a ballot measure in Oklahoma, a pre-emptive ban on implementation of Muslim shariah law in the state: “Oklahoma Surprise: Islam as an Election Issue -- Ballot Measure on Shariah Law Fueled a Political…

I guess after about a year and a half of dancing around the truth, the Associated Press decided that confession of some of the truth about Government/General Motors is good for the soul. Conveniently, the AP's de facto partial confession, delivered via reporter Sharon Silke Carty, comes as the success of the company's initial public offering seems assured. Carty's confession consists of…