Crime

On Fox Chicago News Friday evening, reporter Tera Williams did a piece on Chicago's gun buyback program scheduled for today.  The city gives prepaid credit cards for weapons turned in.  This year it's paying $100 for each assault weapon, $75 for guns and $10 for BB guns, air guns and replica guns.Williams questioned several residents on the effectiveness of the program.  One man told her (at…

Columbus Bureau Chief Jim Provance at the Toledo Blade is a one-man "Name That Party" creativity machine: In March of last year (covered at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), in a story about late financial reports from Ohio's state government, Provance identified State Auditor Mary Taylor, who criticized Governor Ted Strickland's administration for being so tardy with the numbers that they could not…

After showing viewers of the May 7 "Fox & Friends"  a montage of network news coverage portraying Times Square bombing suspect as a down-on-his-luck family man, Fox News anchor Steve Doocy interviewed Media Research Center President Brent Bozell for his reaction about the media's portrayal of Faisal Shahzad (MP3 audio available here; click play in embed at right for video): STEVE DOOCY, Fox…

Consistency, thy name is AP. The Associated Press's story roll-out on former Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann's anticipated guilty pleas to ethics violations followed the usual script: The initial report, carried here at Cleveland.com, failed to mention Dann's Democratic Party affiliation. A later extended report breaks down and reveals Dann's party membership in its ninth of eleven paragraphs…

NewsBusters contributor Scott Whitlock's May 4 item, "MSNBC's Contessa Brewer 'Frustrated' That Times Square Bomber Is a Muslim" was noticed by Fox News Channel "Special Report" anchor Bret Baier, who included a reference to the story and the underlying controversy in his May 5 "Grapevine" segment. [MP3 audio available here; click play on embed at right to watch video] Brewer, a daytime live news…

CBS's local affiliate in Chicago today threatened to stop covering the Illinois Senate race if the Republican candidate continues to harp on an issue extremely damaging to his Democratic opponent.If a candidate for the United States Senate was a senior loan officer for a bank that made over $20 million in loans to convicted bookies and pimps (while he was employed as a loan officer), is that…

John Christoffersen's article for the Associated Press on Tuesday night highlighted the life woes of Faisal Shahzad, the suspect in the failed Times Square bombing plot, citing how "his life seemed to unravel." Christoffersen also noted Shazad's "outspokenness about [former] President George W. Bush and the Iraq war."The AP writer's article, titled "Times Square bombing suspect's life had…

Liberal political pundits frequently remind Americans that words matter, which makes broadcast network reporters' coverage of Arizona's new crack down on illegal immigrants so appalling.   Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed a law on April 23 that would make it a misdemeanor for immigrants to not carry documentation proving they are in the country legally. The bill gave state law enforcement the…

Pres. Obama believes in Miranda rights and civilian trials for terrorists who seek to kill Americans.  But when it comes to companies that have supplied untold quantitites of energy resources to the American economy and paid out billions in wages and supply purchases to American workers and firms, well, punitive ex post facto laws are PBO's order of the day.Under the law of the land, the Oil…

On Tuesday's American Morning, CNN's Jim Acosta sympathized with the suspect in the failed Times Square terror plot, Faisal Shahzad, citing how a guest claimed that his family's house in Connecticut went into foreclosure in 2009: "One would have to imagine that that brought a lot of pressure and a lot of heartache on that family" [see video here].Acosta remarked on Shahzad's familial difficulty…

At the top-left corner of the Washington Post's front page today is a celebration of pot smoking in the nation's capital. "As D.C. votes on marijuana, seeds already firmly planted: Council weighs medical use of 'pervasive, accepted' drug."Reporters Paul Schwartzman and Annys Shin fill 28 paragraphs with copy from pot smokers and pot lobbyists and pot dealers, and nowhere in those 28 paragraphs of…

A number of media outlets continue to hold water for the weekend's pro-illegal immigration protesters, as NewsBusters has reported, painting violence at many rallies as somehow unexpected or not representative of the larger movement.While that characterization may be fair, the benefit of the doubt afforded to immigration protesters by some of the nation's leading media outlets stands in stark…

Former leftist agitator Brandon Darby took the mainstream media to task today for toeing the administration line on supposed right-wing violence while ignoring the leftists who actually pose a threat to the nation's security.Few know the measures political violence better than Darby (pictured right). He spent years as a radical leftist/anarchist, espousing hatred for the United States and…