Bias by Omission

When you increase demand for something, its price should go up. In the case of bonds, if the demand for them increases, their price should go up, and their effective interest-rate yield should go down. That didn't happen on Friday when the Federal Reserve began executing its second round of "money from nothing" quantitative easing. Even though the Fed increased demand, bond prices went down…

Thursday evening, NB's Ken Shepherd accurately pointed out how little establishment press interest there has been in prominently carrying an Associated Press report about how the Obama administration has been, in the words of the wire service's Dina Cappiello, "downplaying scientific findings, misrepresenting data and most recently misconstruing the opinions of experts it solicited." This is…

During the Bush administration, the media made much of political appointees supposedly editing and otherwise interfering with the integrity of the work of career federal government scientists, particularly on studies pertaining to global warming/climate change. Well now the Associated Press is reporting that an inspector general's report from the Interior Department released yesterday found…

Before critiquing, I should recognize that USA Today, while most of the establishment press has snoozed, has done a very creditable job of exposing the wide differential between federal employee and private-sector pay (Aug. 10, 2010; "Federal workers earning double their private counterparts"), and of identifying the outrageous degree by which salaries in the upper levels of Uncle Sam's empire…

New York Times reporter Channing Joseph engaged in light-hearted humanizing of those stuffy Communists in Sunday’s Metro section, “Where Marxists Pontificate, And Play.” The worst thing Joseph can say about the gathering of supporters of tyrannical regimes at the Brecht Forum in Manhattan is that Communists have a reputation for “seriousness.” There’s even a boring online slide show with…

Leftist community organizing group ACORN "should pay back $3.2 million in federal funding, mostly because it hasn't shown that its lead-removal work was performed at a reasonable cost," the Associated Press's Kevin Freking reported today. "The auditors also said that some of the grant money was spent inappropriately." "Congress has cut off ACORN's federal funding after allegations of voter…

They're back, they have their media water-carriers in place, and the Obama administration is smack dab in the middle of it. The United Nations is pushing for countries in the developed world to keep their "promise" to, in the worlds of Charles J. Hanley at the Associated Press,  "raise up to $100 billion a year in new money for poorer countries to cope with climate change and reduce their…

It seems that the Associated Press is selective in correcting errors it occasionally makes in calling election results. In the case of the GA-02 Congressional race between incumbent Democrat Sanford Bishop and Republican challenger Mike Keown, the wire service declared Keown the winner at 10:55 p.m. on Election Night, only to reverse its call and declare Bishop the victor three hours later…

There seems to be a schism between two of the media giants that lefties hold in high regard – the entire MSNBC network and Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” host Jon Stewart. After Stewart took a few jabs at MSNBC during his Oct. 30 Washington, D.C. rally, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann took umbrage at the equivalency Stewart drew between his network and the Fox News Channel. In Olbermann’s view…

After a week of silence, NBC Nightly News finally mentioned that President Obama, in an interview with Univision Radio last Monday, October 25, encouraged Hispanic voters to not sit out the election, but say “we’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us.” But correspondent Savannah Guthrie failed to see that as a divisive and unpresidential statement…

One of the more egregious results of the Democrat-controlled Congress skipping town without passing a budget, thus failing to address the issue of whether scheduled income tax increases will really go into effect for everyone, the highest income-earners, or no one at all, is that the Internal Revenue Service and employers have been left in the lurch with no idea of how to prepare for next year…

On Saturday's CBS Early Show, correspondent Wyatt Andrews previewed the Washington DC 'Rally to Restore Sanity And/Or Fear,' organized by comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert: "Almost all of the folks we found said they hope it's about the moderates of America....Stewart seems to have touched what you might call the anti-anger nerve." Andrews went on to chide conservative figures for…

On Monday, while both ABC's Good Morning America and NBC's Today covered the scandal involving reporters at CBS Anchorage affiliate KTVA caught on tape discussing ways to attack Republican Joe Miller's senate campaign, CBS's Early Show failed to make any mention of the incident. On Good Morning America, White House correspondent Jake Tapper reported: "In Alaska, some reporters with the local…

Per MerriamWebster.com -- Gaffe: 1) a social or diplomatic blunder; 2) a noticeable mistake. The Associated Press's Calvin Woodward has had a few shining analytical moments during the first two years of the Obama administration (examples here and here). The AP reporter's dispatch on "gaffes and gotchas" Friday morning, which attempted to communicate a sense of bemusement tinged with…