Labeling

On Wednesday's All Things Considered, NPR's Elizabeth Shogren blasted the Republican congressional majority led by Newt Gingrich during the 1990s. Shogren spotlighted a MIT professor's assertion that former President Bill Clinton "stood up for the EPA when it faced the most frightening attack it had ever had. Congressional Republicans, led by Newt Gingrich, wanted to gut regulations...some even…

Today, as the wire service AFP reported in a story carried at Yahoo.com, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, in the question and answer exchange after his prepared testimony, told the House Financial Services Committee that "If we were to tighten (monetary) policy, the economy would tank." That assessment of the economy's fragility qualifies as news, especially given the Obama…

Norah O'Donnell gushed over Eric Holder on Wednesday's CBS This Morning, trumpeting the supposedly "remarkable" and "very personal" speech that the attorney general gave to the NAACP on Tuesday. O'Donnell also played up how "Holder, the first African-American attorney general...talked very personally about, after Trayvon Martin's death, counseling his own 15-year-old son if he was stopped by…

CBS This Morning suddenly discontinued identifying San Diego Mayor Bob Filner as a Democrat on Tuesday, after including his political affiliation in two previous reports on the allegations of sexual harassment swirling around the politician. Bill Whitaker pointed out how Filner "dismissed [the] charges...as coming from anonymous sources" and how that was "in contrast to this contrite video…

Whatever they're paying Teresa Ghilarducci, who is "the Bernard L. and Irene Schwartz chair of economic policy analysis at the New School for Social Research," it's too much. The bolded sentences seen after the jump which Ms. Ghilarducci included in a Friday New York Times op-ed (HT "Mungowitz" at the "Kids Prefer Cheese" blog via Megan McArdle) makes my contention an open and shut case (…

On Weekend Edition Sunday, NPR's Rachel Martin helped Daily Beast editor Reza Aslan promote his new biography of Jesus, who posited that there is a "chasm between the historical Jesus and the Jesus...taught about in church." As proof of this supposed gap, Aslan claimed that "there is actually no statement of messianic identity from Jesus" in the Gospel of Mark. Aslan has it wrong. Jesus…

"The race-baiting media owe George Zimmerman an apology. A jury of his peers has spoken. Zimmerman was acquitted, and that’s that. Any continuation of the media’s unrelenting, divisive, hate-mongering coverage is an absolute disgrace," NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell argued in a statement released this afternoon. "Race baiting persists in America because it’s encouraged by the press," the…

On ABC's This Week yesterday, former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer -- who resigned in 2008 when caught dead to rights illegally purchasing the services of prostitutes but was never prosecuted because, as announced two days after Election Day in 2008, the Department of Justice decided that "the public interest would not be further advanced by filing criminal charges" -- called the verdict in…

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was predictably unhappy with Saturday's verdict in the George Zimmerman case. He used it as an opportunity to go after what he calls "shoot first" laws, which people in the real world refer to as "stand your ground" laws. It was an irrelevant rant, as Politico's Maggie Haberman pointed out: "In the Zimmerman case, neither the defense nor the prosecution…

Apparently, Associated Press Media Relations Director Paul Colford is unaware of the sage advice that when one is in a deep hole, it's best to stop digging. Shortly after the George Zimmerman verdict, AP reporter Cristina Silva, as noted late last night (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog; HT Breitbart.com) tweeted "So We Can All Kill Teenagers Now? Just Checking." A short time ago, Colford sent me…

For the third time in a week, ABC's Good Morning America failed to identify a politician involved in sex scandal as a Democrat. Amy Robach reported on Friday that "accusations of sexual harassment have been swirling around Mayor Bob Filner for weeks" and that the San Diego politician "apologized for what he called inappropriate behavior", but didn't include his party ID. By contrast, Gayle…

Thursday's CBS This Morning boosted a super PAC aimed at supporting a potential Hillary Clinton presidential run in 2016, and spotlighted how Mrs. Clinton is "sticking to a speaking circuit that recently included the opening of a children's library in Arkansas bearing her name. It's not exactly a presidential library, but it may be just another baby step toward what many believe is inevitable…

Salon.com published an article last Friday entitled “The 10 Most Dangerous Places To Be A Woman In America.” Naturally, the ten places were the states with the strictest abortion regulations in the country. The article, written by Katie McDonough, was chock-full of pro-abortion rights language, starting with the opening sentence: “Lately, the preferred strategy for reproductive rights…

Earlier today (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), I noted how the Associated Press produced a series of reports following Texas Gov. Rick Perry's announcement that he would not seek another term which "can only be explained if their purpose is to poison his possible 2016 presidential aspirations." The first example was a list of "five things to know" about Perry compiled by the AP's "wiseguy"…