Covert Liberal Activists

Just because the site was founded by an alleged plagiarist doesn't mean it's totally devoid of ethical clout. Though you do have to wonder: from where does the Huffington Post recruit its bloggers? The site reportedly informed one of its unpaid contributors last week that he was being let go. The offense: he had used his press credentials as a HuffPo blogger to get labor union demonstrators…

Trick? Or "tweak"? On Friday, a Reuters report at CNBC noted the Federal Reserve's journey into the accounting and reporting twilight zone earlier this month. In doing so, it conducted a clinic in how to make unreality look acceptable and make a dangerous situation appear palatable. In the el bizzarro world at Reuters and those the wire service interviewed for its article: A change in…

Especially on Martin Luther King Day, it seems worth asking whether or not the assassinated civil rights leaders would have cared more about: Whether a talk radio host told his audience, in reference to the No Child Left Behind Act causing many school districts, including the Toledo Public Schools (TPS), to believe they must "teach to the test" to avoid serious sanctions: "teaching little…

"Never let the facts get in the way of a good story" must be the motto at Reuters, or at least of the wire service's Richard Cowan, three other contributors, and Editor Jackie Frank. Cowan's late Sunday afternoon dispatch (HT to an e-mailer) is caricature-driven collection of cliches, half-truth, outright myths, and totally predictable oversights. There's the racial slurs before the heath…

To those who have spent time following new reports emanating from the Associated Press, it's not exactly a secret that many of the alleged journalists who work there are having difficulty with the idea that there will be a new Republican majority in the House during the next two years. A further annoyance is that many members of that majority, especially the newer ones, hold sensible,…

A Christmas Eve report from Ian James at the Associated Press on developments in Venezuela caused me to go to the dictionary to make sure my understanding of the word "bold" is correct. In context, here are the two most relevant definitions of the word found at dictionary.com: (first listing) "not hesitating or fearful in the face of actual or possible danger or rebuff; courageous and…

Did you know that the "big new tax law" signed by President Obama yesterday "will save taxpayers, on average, about $3,000 next year," and that it will have "tax breaks for being married, having children, paying for child care, going to college or investing in securities"? Don't spend that extra $3,000 yet, because it mostly won't be there. With the only major exception being the 2-point cut…

Maybe we need to add the word "Palinography" to the dictionary. Its definition would be: "The process of preparing news photographs and accompanying captions about Sarah Palin in a deliberately negative light." One example many will likely remember involved the amateurish wire service shoes-and-calves-only photos frequently seen during Palin's vice-presidential run. Lori Ziganto at the…

I do hope that Associated Press reporters Arthur Max and Charles J. Hanley are finding some recreational time while they are reporting from Cancun about what's happening at the "United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change." The pair's bosses ought to be asking them how much real attention they are paying to the festivities since they began. For example, as far as I can tell from two…

Good Morning America's Claire Shipman on Thursday tried to disguise a Democratic activist as just a jobless American who would be hurt by Republican failure to extend unemployment benefits. Shipman sympathetically recounted that Edrie Irvine, who she didn't explain spoke at a Nancy Pelosi press conference on Wednesday, "never thought her very livelihood would depend on a political debate in…

This would be really funny if it weren't for the fact that so many supposedly informed people, including our president and those who surround him, may actually buy into ideas being proposed at the United Nations-sponsored Cancun climate conference, and will relish the means by which they could be put into place. At the UK Telegraph today, environment correspondent Louise Gray feeds us the…

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…

On Sunday, NBC Universal launched its annual "Green Week," as part of the company's "Green is Universal" environmental awareness campaign. As NBC embarks on yet another week of "environmentally themed programming," it falls to media watchdogs to point out the massive conflict presented by NBC parent company General Electric's significant financial interests in the policies "Green Week"…

Are they not properly vetting their liberals over at MSNBC? As NewsBuster Lachlan Markay reported on Friday: MSNBC suspended Keith Olbermann indefinitely … after news broke that he had given the maximum allowable contribution to three Democrats without disclosing it to his employers. With Olbermann out, MSNBC needed a fill-in, so in steps Chris Hayes, editor of the liberal magazine, The…