Labeling

Coffee retailing giant Starbucks is getting an earful of outrage and ridicule over its "Race Together" campaign. Its intent, according to chain CEO Howard Schultz, in a joint interview with USA Today's Larry Kramer, is to do something about what he claims is "the divisive role unconscious bias plays in our society and the role empathy can play to bridge those divides." USAT's Kramer claims that…

Friday's ABC World News Tonight touted how the FBI is opening an investigation into departing Congressman Aaron Schock. David Wright devoted a full one minute, 39-second report to Schock allegedly "padding the mileage on his personal car by some 90,000 miles," as well as "misusing campaign funds and...taking improper donations." By contrast, ABC set aside just 30 seconds of air time to a…

NPR's Scott Horsley carried water for the Obama administration on Thursday's All Things Considered as he covered the President's green energy executive order. All of Horsley's soundbites during the segment came from the Democratic chief executive and two boosters of his latest environmental policy. True to form, the slanted NPR correspondent failed to include any criticism of the order in his…

Over at Hot Air, I saw that Seth Meyers, as he was figuratively grilling Texas Senator Ted Cruz on his "Late Night" program — the first rule of these shows is that conservatives get attacked, while liberals get coddled — made his case for global warming by saying, “I think the world’s on fire literally.” I checked outside just a moment ago and "literally" saw no burning bushes or other burning…

In all the hoopla over the Federal Reserve's Wednesday's signals over its intentions to raise interest rates, its significant downgrades to expected growth of the U.S. economy during the next several years have mostly been ignored. The Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, has played a part in that. Both of the wire service's reports following the Fed's actions and predictions on…

Thursday's CBS This Morning celebrated the introduction of a transgender character to its network's long-running soap opera, The Bold and the Beautiful. Jeff Glor trumpeted the "'bold' move for daytime drama," and hyped how "the fictional plot twist on a CBS soap that is starting a real conversation about tolerance." The morning newscast touted actress Karla Mosley, who plays the character,…

Many media myths won't die because those who should know better — and I believe in many cases do know better, and don't care — perpetuate them. One can't divine his mindset, but Politico's Michael Crowley, in his coverage of Benjamin Netanyahu's resounding Tuesday electoral victory, did his part to continue the myth that the Israeli Prime Minister's "March 3 speech to Congress (was) arranged by…

On Tuesday's CNN Tonight, Perez Hilton compared former Vice President Dick Cheney to the extremist group masquerading as a place of worship, Westboro Baptist Church. Host Don Lemon interrupted a fight between conservative Ben Ferguson and liberal Marc Lamont Hill over Dick Cheney's "race card" comments about President Obama, and turned to the celebrity gossip blogger for his take on the issue.…

All three of the major broadcast networks covered during their Tuesday night newscasts the story of unruly passenger abroad a United Airlines flight from the day before, but the CBS Evening News left out the key detail that the man was screaming about jihad and a bomb abroad the plane.

Apparently, the sheer number of weak to awful economic reports seen during the past month or so finally led Josh Boak at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, to acknowledge that "critical pieces of the economy remain troubled almost six years into the recovery." Boak's belated timing is interesting, to say the least, given that the Federal Reserve is weighing whether or not to…

ABC, CBS, and NBC's morning newscasts on Monday all touted the apparent "backlash" and "firestorm" against Italian fashion designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana for their support for the traditional family and condemnation of in-vitro fertilization and surrogate motherhood. The programs all spotlighted how homosexual musician Elton John called for a boycott of the duo's label, and how…

Here is a clear case of media reluctance to acknowledge a drop-dead obvious fact — one even the often fact-averse New York Times has admitted. In an 8:40 p.m. report tonight, Jim Salter at the Associated Press spent eight paragraphs avoiding any mention of the race of Jeffrey Williams, the 20 year-old man arrested today and charged in connection with the shooting of two Ferguson, Missouri police…

Thursday night, Fox News's Megyn Kelly went after the press's and the political class's continued lionization of a "protest movement based upon a lie," namely those sowing slow-motion anarchy in Ferguson, Missouri following the death of Michael Brown, and "a segment of our political leaders and pundits" egging them on by giving them undeserved visibility and sympathy. Members of Congress who…

The only surprise should be that anyone is surprised. Those who are used to how frequently the word "unexpectedly" appears in reports about disappointing economic data certainly won't be at all shocked at a Friday Bloomberg News report by Steve Matthews and A. Catarina Saraiva telling readers that "U.S. economic data have been falling short of prognosticators' expectations by the most in six…