Labeling

PBS’s Jim Lehrer forwarded several questions with a clear leftward tilt during an interview with President Obama on his Newshour program on Monday. He urged the executive to “crack heads” to get his health care plan passed, and inquired if “taxing the wealthy” was an option to fund it. Lehrer later pressed Mr. Obama on the “huge profits” being made by “big Wall Street banks.”The PBS anchor led…

On Monday’s GMA, ABC’s Martha Raddatz pressed Hillary Clinton from the left on the Obama administration’s stance towards North Korea: “From the beginning...the rhetoric seemed almost exactly like the Bush administration’s, and it didn’t do much good. So is it a real shift that you decided to dial back?” Earlier in the month, she also labeled the overall Obama foreign policy “very thoughtful.”The…

You don't have to be one of South Carolina Mark Sanford's few remaining supporters or sympathizers (and I am neither) to recognize the following AP headline as ridiculously, sarcastically biased:While this headline might make be good water cooler and late-night comedy fodder (perhaps that was the point?), it's more than a little unprofessional, and beyond that more than likely inaccurate.

Owning an semiautomatic AK-47, much less giving them away free with the purchase of a pickup truck, seems just "a tad irresponsible" to Carol Costello. The CNN anchor, who said she grew up with guns in her house as a teenager, tacked to the left on gun rights in her interview with Kansas City auto dealer Mark Muller, who is giving away vouchers for the Russian-made rifles with the purchase of a…

[Update, 10:36 pm Eastern: audio and video links added below.]CNN anchor Rick Sanchez devoted an entire segment on Thursday’s Newsroom program to his interviews of five “wise Latina” women from his hometown of Miami, including his own mother, about the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Though Sanchez did point out how many Americans disagreed with the nominee’s decision in the…

When you claim that a grassroots group isn't a grassroots group -- beware of actual grassroots activists. That's the lesson reporter Sharon Male of Parade Magazine learned when she attacked Patients United Now, the health care project of the free-market Americans for Prosperity Foundation, in the July 12 magazine. Under the headline "Are Grassroots Activists for Real?" she claimed that some "so-…

During CNN’s coverage of the Sotomayor hearings on Wednesday, legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin implied that the Supreme Court’s 2008 decision to uphold the Second Amendment was revolutionary: “When I was in law school...the idea that you had a Second Amendment right to a gun was considered preposterous....But the Supreme Court [in Heller]...said that...individuals have a personal right to bear arms.”…

Keith Olbermann, one of MSNBC’s resident leftists posing as anchors, named Jim Robinson, the founder of FreeRepublic.com, as his runner-up on his “Worst Person in the World” feature on his Countdown program on Monday evening but twice called him “Jim Thompson.”After first implying that “Thompson” and his site’s moderators were a bunch of juveniles, Olbermann explained that the reason why the Free…

CNN on Friday turned again to The Daily Beast’s John Avlon for his designated “wingnuts”on the left and right, but he was much more critical of his right-wing selection. Avlon picked Rep. Henry Waxman as his leftist “wingnut,” but still labeled him a “respected” man. He conceded no such quality for his other pick. During a second appearance on Monday, Avlon focused on his conservative “wingnut,”…

On Monday’s Newsroom program, CNN’s senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin stuck with his analysis of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor from late June- that the judge was “mainstream,” and that it would be difficult to use the reversal of her decision in the New Haven firefighters case and her “Wise Latina” comment against her. When anchor Rick Sanchez asked if one of those issues was more…

[Update, 2:34 pm Eastern: Audio and video clips from the report posted.]Despite the change in administration, CNN’s Michael Ware, who regularly issued doom-and-gloom reports on Iraq in past years, bluntly stated during a report on Thursday’s Anderson Cooper 360 that “America cannot win the war in Afghanistan...with bombs and bullets,” and offered that the only solution to the attacks on NATO…

MSNBC’s David Shuster and Tamron Hall labeled the circulation of a photo of President Obama allegedly glancing at a teenager’s posterior a “right wing smear,” and singled out Fox News and Drudge as culprits. They brought on a Media Matters spokesman, who accused these sites of being motivated by a “racist stereotype of an oversexed black man being a predator.” They let this accusation go…

CNN commentator Jack Cafferty revisited his favorite punching bag on Monday’s Situation Room: Sarah Palin. After referring to one of Palin’s reasons for her resignation, that she wanted to avoid becoming a lame duck, Cafferty cracked: “She was already lame.” He also predicted that she would become a mere “thumbsucker” if she’s no longer considered a contender for the 2012 presidential race.…