Labeling

Although a recent Sacred Heart University poll indicated 45.4 percent of respondents thought journalists and broadcasters are mostly or somewhat liberal - the bias isn't ideologically driven according to Newsweek editor Jon Meacham. Meacham appeared on Comedy Central's January 21 "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and told viewers the media gear reporting toward conflict. "I absolutely…

CNBC "Street Sweetie" Erin Burnett revealed what some might have suspected about "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer all along. "[H]e's crazy - certifiably," Burnett said on the January 18 "Late Night with Conan O'Brien." Of course, Cramer is a regular on NBC's "Today" and "Nightly News" as an expert on the economy. On December 19, Cramer appeared on "Today" and was very critical of Fed Chairman…

*Update/Correction (15:28 | January 11): Grasmick has donated to Republicans running for statewide office (OpenSecrets tracks only federal contributions), as Mark Newgent of the RedMaryland blog notes, yet all told her state and federal contributions to the GOP are quite smaller than that of those to the Democratic Party. See Newgent's item here. The January 10 Baltimore Sun, reporting on an…

It's one of the great MSM rituals of presidential politics: the labeling of leading Dems as "moderates" or "centrists." Gail Collins honors the tradition in her New York Times column of today. Now it's true that Collins ostensibly speaks more of Obama's tone than of his politics. But, ultimately, as you'll see, she melds the two to portray a thoroughly moderate man. We'll do a reality check…

Reuters, in its headline for a story reporting the death of Philip Agee, a former CIA agent turned traitor, labeled Agee a "CIA whistle-blower" ("CIA whistle-blower Philip Agee dies in Cuba"). As the blog Little Green Footballs put it, Agee was "the traitor who exposed fellow CIA agents to violence and murder by revealing their names" in his 1975 book "Inside the Company: A CIA Diary."Agee, who…

Last year's most bizarre and famously icky sex scandal was, of course, Senator Larry Craig's airport bathroom incident, in which the Idaho Republican was alleged to have been soliciting homosexual sex from an undercover cop. Suffice it to say no one who came across the story could walk away without knowing Craig's party affiliation, and in some cases his record as a conservative with some…

Congressional "Pay-As-You-Go" budgeting translates to perpetually bigger government Originally published on December 21st by Human Events. The New Seal of the Federal GovernmentWant to ensure the growth of government?  Forever?The media does, and they have with Liberals devised the perfect way to do it.  It is the "pay-as-you-go" Congressional budgeting rule -- Pay-Go.  It requires every move…

How thoughtful of the AP to give NewsBusters a Christmas contestant for “Name That Party.” Consider this post our thank you note for the timely gift! In this December 25 article, the AP buried the party affiliation of Democratic Philadelphia mayor John F. Street in the very last sentence of a ten-paragraph article about the mayor taking an extra $111,000 in pay raises that he rejected while in…

Apparently the Drudge Report has struck yet another nerve in the mainstream media. Today, Variety magazine reporter Brian Lowry pens a plea for civility- calling out the readers of the Drudge Report in particular. Writes Lowry, Gee, gang, why so angry? Every time a column or article of mine gets posted on the site, I invariably wake up to a torrent of hostile emails. For awhile, it was like a…

Was This the Slipping Digit?Found within the confines of the Los Angeles Times "Top of the Ticket" blog -- actually in its URL address -- is an interesting bit of a slip of the thumb (or finger, as I have no idea how Mister Andrew Malcolm types).The entry is entitled "Is (Hillary Rodham) Clinton now planting people in campaign forums?" (we at MRC would never insinuate such a thing), and is the…