Labeling

Last week, a Media Research Center study documented how ABC, CBS and NBC were using loaded labels to paint House Republicans, especially the Freedom Caucus, as ideologues who are outside the American political mainstream. Now, several leading conservative Congressmen have sent us statements blasting the networks for their slant. “Only in this town does doing what you told voters you said you were…

On Friday's NBC Nightly News, Chris Jansing touted Politico's scoop about Dr. Ben Carson's "scholarship" claim about West Point, underlining how the liberal outlet "call[ed] Carson's story a 'fabrication.'" However, Jansing's report aired more than two hours after Politico removed the "fabrication" term" from their headline." The journalist later hyped that it's "hard to overstate how much Carson…

Add Arizona's Meritus Health Partners to the growing list of Affordable Care Act co-op failures. The Daily Signal reports that this makes 11 of 23 such state Obamacare co-ops which will have closed their doors by the end of 2015 after three or fewer years in operation. The Associated Press, which, along with most of the rest of the establishment press, has been playing aggressive defense on…

NBC's Today on Monday aired a sensationalistic report on the upcoming release of two books that are "exposing alleged corruption and infighting within the Catholic Church." Keir Simmons boosted a statement from one of the publishers involved, who claimed that "if the Vatican were a company they'd be in Chapter 11, and heads would be rolling from all the mistrust and financial abuses." Simmons…

As is so often the case with such stories, one can tell how favorable or disappointing a government report on the economy was by whether a story about it is still present at the Associated Press's "Top Business News" page several hours after its release. Today's news from the Census Bureau on September's factory orders and shipments, released at 10 a.m., was extremely disappointing. Thus, it is…

Tuesday's CBS This Morning zeroed in on "how a new generation of couples relies on the buddy system for the big day" of their weddings. Gayle King pointed out how a "decline in religious beliefs is changing the way many Americans are getting married these days." Correspondent Adriana Diaz spotlighted how "more and more Americans are asking their friends to do the honors" due to the significant…

New York Times congressional reporter Carl Hulse delivered a balanced column Tuesday recounting why reformist, Tea Party-minded conservatives have aligned against more traditional Chamber of Commerce Republicans. But it was marred by Hulse's contemptuous tone ("the anti-chamber crowd") and labeling habits, with Hulse making not one, not two, but six references to "hard-right" conservatives in a 1…

CNN's Alisyn Camerota spotlighted Senator Lindsey Graham on Monday's New Day over his supposedly good performance at the earlier CNBC debate for the lower-tier Republican presidential candidates: "You being on that early debate has allowed you to bust out some great zingers and jokes. I mean, a lot of people thought that you stole the show...it gave you more air time that you wouldn't actually…

A Friday evening story at the New York Times covered the Obama administration's decision to "try to block the release of a handful of emails between President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton." In it, reporters Michael D. Shear and Michael S. Schmidt demonstrated that President Obama undoubtedly did not tell the truth in his interview with CBS News's Steve Kroft in a 60…

On Thursday, the government reported that the nation's economy turned in yet another quarter of poor economic performance, estimating that its gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 1.5 percent in the third quarter. The business press almost universally downplayed the news, and told readers that the fourth quarter will be better. No one talked about how much the tepid growth of the…

The election of a new Speaker of the House had the New York Times firing up its reliably crooked labeling machine. On Thursday, reporter and repeat offender David Herszenhorn lamented that "Many Republicans, including members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus who had hounded Mr. Boehner from the speakership, accused him and other party leaders of betraying them with a late-hour deal that was…

Many of the state cooperative health insurers, or "co-ops," set up under the provisions of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, have gotten into serious financial trouble quite quickly. Almost half have cracked up completely. Specifically, as noted at Forbes.com on Thursday morning, "[O]f the 24 Obamacare co-ops funded with federal tax dollars, one (Vermont’s) never got approval to sell…

Here's what should be an easy question: With data which has already been seasonally adjusted, what's more important — a) the fact that an index is a) up by 3 percent in the past year or b) the fact that it has fallen 5 percent in the past four months? The correct answer is obviously b) — unless you're a writer for the Associated Press whose mission is to convince readers that the housing market…

People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. And people who ridicule the level of others' speech patterns should check theirs first. CNBC didn't do that. Instead, on Thursday, as I noted in a previous NewsBusters post, it childishly rushed out a grade-level evaluation of the Republican presidential candidates' speech patterns during the first three debates, including the Wednesday train wreck…