Bias by Omission

On Saturday, an Italian cruise liner was attacked by Somali pirates. The would-be hijackers, however, were repelled by the ship's private armed security detail, which hails from Israel.Well, today blogger Don Surber noted how the BBC is leaving out the nationality of the security crew by inaccurately attributing the "crew" of the Melody with fending off the attack. Far from being an insignificant…

The Associated Press's Stylebook (as of 2008, per this Houston Chronicle blog entry) has the following to say about political party identification in stories:Party Affiliation - Let relevance be the guide in determining whether to include a political figure's party affiliation in a story. Party affiliation is pointless in some stories, such as an account of a governor accepting a button from a…

While President Obama was extoling the virtues of wind power in an Earth Day speech, his Justice Department lawyers were attempting to scuttle a lawsuit filed in federal court against Iran by former U.S. embassy hostages. The lawsuit alleges that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was one of the hostage-takers who interrogated the captives. Two days after the story broke on the Associated…

In addition to his abuse of the word "exploration" and his false claim that he has "often said" that he supports additional drilling for oil and natural gas within the U.S. and off its shores, President 'Prompter Barack Obama misstated the timing of his tale of a pioneering oil man by a "only" a century (picture at right is from "The Story of Oil in Pennsylvania").Beyond that, his fond recounting…

Straight from UPI's transcript of Barack Obama's Earth Day remarks in Newton, Iowa yesterday -- in the midst of flights that reportedly expended 9,000 gallons of jet fuel -- here is the President's take on this country's oil dependency (bold is mine):Twenty percent of what we spend on imports is the price of our oil imports. ..... It's the cost we've known ever since the gas shortages of the…

Of all the things for CNN to pick as an e-mail alert topic, AutoNation's profitable first-quarter results seemed quite an odd selection. But there it was:It appears that CNN wanted harried readers who wouldn't dig deeper to think that the "auto industry" as a whole is recovering, or at least stabilizing, and that maybe there's even a way out for General Motors and Chrysler that doesn't involve a…

Almost a year ago, I was posting on what I called the "Supply-Side Stunner" (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog).In April 2008, the US Treasury collected an all-time record $407.3 billion ($403.75 billion after subtracting the first $3.35 billion wave of stimulus checks, which really should have been treated as outlays, that went out just before month-end). It was an indication that, as I said at the…

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Lamestream Media The media coverage of the more than 800 Taxed Enough Already (TEA) Party protests that took place in all fifty states on April 15 ranged from disdainful dismissal of their nature, significance and import, to outright hostility towards the events and individual participants, to sexual innuendo-based full-on ridicule…

A grisly late 2007 quadruple-murder case in the Cincinnati suburb of Sharonville has apparently been solved with the arrest of Santiago Moreno. Moreno apparently brutally stabbed his four other apartment mates with near-surgical precision. It is horrible that these men died. It is great news that the monster who did it has apparently been caught. What is hard to understand is why after nearly 1-1…

Remember when NewsBusters told you about CNN ignoring a report on left-wing extremism?  Perhaps you have heard a reference to Timothy McVeigh recently, as an example of right-wing extremism?  Well, as it turns out, McVeigh isn’t the only extremist to bomb a building.Please welcome Daniel Andreas San Diego (shown at right in photos via FBI.gov) to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Most Wanted…

Here’s a quick informal poll:  Who has heard news of Russia’s recent troop buildup in the South Ossetia region of Georgia?   Most of our readers would immediately think of the Russian invasion of that region last summer, during the presidential contest, but the Russians are arguably saber rattling again with a fresh buildup of boots on-the-ground ahead of planned NATO exercises.  Last August, the…

On April 14, The Toledo Blade, apparently having temporarily misplaced the comma key, reported that "Longtime Lucas County Sheriff James Telb and a top commander and two former deputies were indicted by a federal grand jury Tuesday on charges related to the 2004 death of an inmate at the jail" (HT to Maggie Thurber in an e-mail). The Blade, which likes to brag about the over 1,000 articles (I'm…

Think Obamamania is limited to only His Messiahship and Michelle Obama's well toned arms and J. Crew wardrobe?  Think again.  Today's front page of the Washington Post features "Move Over, Miley. In Washington, The Obama Girls Are the Latest Craze" by staff writer Ellen McCarthy.  The tone of this thoughtful analysis is set early in the article:The tween girls of the Washington area have…

Gosh, I thought you could just throw up a few solar panels, plug into the grid, and our energy problems would be solved in an environmentally perfect way. (/sarc) Of course not. Early this morning, Rita Beamish of the Associated Press reported that solar panel projects are running into problems with water availability and efforts to protect endangered species. But, as usual for a report on energy…