Labeling

During a roundtable discussion on Monday’s Newsroom program with conservative talk show host Martha Zoller and her left-wing colleague Mike Malloy, CNN anchor Rick Sanchez strangely differentiated between "intellectual" conservatives who are "not so crazy" about Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and social conservatives who "love" her. Sanchez then described Zoller as a "mix" of…

Studs Terkel, author and broadcaster, died on Halloween.  Barack Obama observed: "Studs was not just a Chicago institution, he was a national treasure. His writings, broadcasts, and interviews shed light on what it meant to be an American in the 20th century." Obama highly praised Terkel when he was alive, declaring him " not just a national treasure - he's one of Chicago's treasures."  Terkel's…

On Friday’s American Morning program, CNN correspondent Carol Costello referred to the liberal organization ACORN as merely "a group committed to registering minority voters," and highlighted how it’s "trying to quiet what it calls ‘hysteria,’ coming from conservative circles" who "charge it’s... guilty of voter fraud." The on-screen graphic accompanying her report, which was the last full…

CNN anchor Kiran Chetry referred to John McCain’s warning of Democratic Party rule in both the White House and the Congress if Barack Obama is elected president as "scare tactics" during a preview of a report on Thursday’s American Morning: "Five more days -- the scare tactics continue. Should you be afraid of one party rule?" A clip of McCain naming Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and…

CNN practiced a more subtle form of bias during two reports in October by using its on-screen graphics. On October 14th's Newsroom program, a graphic accompanying a segment on Sarah and Todd Palin's connections to the Alaskan Independence Party proclaimed “The Palins and the Fringe.” On the other hand, a chyron from a report on Tuesday's Situation Room about Barack Obama making campaign stops in…

The worldview of conservatives and republicans makes them a happier lot than liberals and democrats, even in a year when the republican "candidate is sinking in the polls," the republican "president plumbs historic depths of popular scorn" and the republican "free market squeals for intervention" according to a story in The Washington Post.The story, A Happiness Gap: Doomacrats and Republigrins…

Los Angeles Times reporter Janet Hook informed readers of the October 24 paper that while "McCain seeks to portray Obama as an extreme liberal," that some liberals are worrying Obama is too centrist for their tastes.One such liberal was Amy Isaacs of Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), a liberal advocacy group. Isaacs downplayed Obama's liberalism while affirming it, saying he was not a "…

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported today that former Republican Governor Arne Carlson (Minn.) has endorsed Democratic Sen. Barack Obama's presidential bid. Carlson heralded himself as a "Republican maverick" and hailed Obama as a potentially "truly great president." Tribune staffer Mike Kaszuba failed to label Carlson's ideology, but suggested in the second paragraph of his October 23 article…

Spreading the WordAs we reported earlier, former Newsweek reporter Michael Hastings drops one rhetorical bomb after another on the media in a new article for GQ magazine.  All of them reinforcing what we already knew, best summarized by Hastings himself: the press's "objectivity is a fallacy." It has been a horrendous year for the media's credibility, and Hastings's statements only make it…

Regular CNN commentator Jack Cafferty may be "on the mend" after a three-week break for a "unanticipated encounter with a surgeon’s scalpel," as he put it, but he certainly hasn’t recovered from his Palin Derangement Syndrome. He launched a new attack on the Alaska governor on Wednesday’s Situation Room. This time, Cafferty returned to the issue of Trooper/Taser-gate and brought up two additional…

CNN contributor Roland Martin’s Wednesday column on CNN.com bluntly accused Republicans of exhibiting "fear and desperation" in their criticism of Barack Obama: "McCain's campaign is no longer about issues. He and his supporters want to bring up anything and everything to derail Obama, and nothing is sticking, so they just keep returning to their old bag of tricks." This "bag" apparently includes…

During an interview with Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin on Tuesday’s Situation Room, CNN’s Drew Griffin ripped a phrase out of a recent article by National Review’s Byron York which criticized the media’s coverage of Palin and characterized it as an attack on the Alaska governor. Griffin pointed out how "[t]he press has been pretty hard on you. The Democrats have been pretty…

CNN contributor Roland Martin used an unoriginal line to attack Rush Limbaugh on Monday’s Election Center program. Host Campbell Brown wanted Martin, a Barack Obama supporter, to comment on something the talk radio host had said about Colin Powell’s endorsement of the Democratic presidential candidate: "Rush Limbaugh said today, this is about race. That's all it's about." Martin’s response: "I…