Labeling

The press has mostly gone off the rails in covering President Trump's proposal to rescind $15 billion in unspent funds, insisting on characterizing the move as "cuts." The competition for the worst coverage is fierce, but Andrew Taylor's story at the Associated Press, as carried at the Washington Post, probably wins the prize for the most incoherent headline: "Administration proposes cutting $15…

The front of Sunday’s New York Times featured political reporter Jonathan Martin’s tribute to the ailing Sen. John McCain: “At Home, McCain Shares Memories and Regrets.” It has some charming moments, but comes off hypocritical, given the paper’s back and forth feelings for McCain, praising him when he was a threat to more conservative Republicans during the 2008 party primaries, condemning him…

After a horrible week of errors and scandals for NBC News, the network capped off the week with flaming liberal bias. Friday’s NBC Nightly News ended with anchor Lester Holt offering a pathetic puff piece on a new documentary about liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whom Holt deemed is someone that “many may not appreciate” concerning her “lasting influence” and “commitment to…

CNN’s major primetime event on Wednesday night was their town hall featuring former FBI Director James Comey taking questions from the students, faculty, and staff at the College of William and Mary (his alma mater). Being a town hall-style event, the evening was filled to the brim with questions, a majority of which were asked by moderator Anderson Cooper. But when it came to the questions asked…

At the Associated Press, Politico ("the latest evidence that Republicans face a punishing midterm environment"), USA Today (where Nancy Pelosi was reportedly "thrilled"), and elsewhere, the establishment press once again attempted to create "blue wave" solace for Democrats after a House special-election loss. This time it was Arizona's 8th Congressional District, where Republican Debbie Lesko…

The New York Times devoted the latest edition of its fashion mag, T Magazine, to marking the early 1980s in New York City, but used prominent pieces to bash President Ronald Reagan as a "terrifying" Christian-right ogre. From the introduction: "...with the inauguration of a conservative president who was no great friend to the arts, or to marginalized groups, including immigrants, the poor and…

CBS News broke the absurdity meter in a Monday afternoon tweet and related story about today's sidewalk attacks by the driver of a van in Toronto. Despite acknowledging that the man's actions appeared to be deliberate, the networks described them as "hit-and-run."

Thursday’s New York Times featured some unseemly gushing over Democratic Judge Kimba Wood, whose decision outed Fox News host Sea Hannity as a client of Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, under a headline showcasing extraneous praise for Wood: “On Bench for Cohen Case: ‘The Judicial Equivalent of Teddy Roosevelt." Reporters Alan Feuer and Benjamin Weiser opened by irresponsibly lumping in the…

The Associated Press and many of the AP's colleagues in the establishment press have had a nearly 60-year romance with Cuba's brutal communist regime. They have frequently regaled readers with the island nation's "free healthcare" and "free education," as if that makes up for the fact that the typical Cuban subsists on far less than the $2 a day the international community considers extreme…

The news of Barbara Bush’s passing wasn’t even an hour old Tuesday night when MSNBC host Chris Hayes had his All In panel use the news to malign the current state of the Republican Party. The liberal brought on anti-Trump Republican David Jolly and former Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer (CA) to discuss how the GOP had fallen so far since it’s heyday with the Bush dynasty.

In Friday’s New York Times, Gardiner Harris and Eileen Sullivan went on the attack against Mike Pompeo, the current CIA Director and President Trump’s nominee to become Secretary of State with the title “Trading Snarl for Smile, Pompeo Makes Case to Lead State Department.”

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell has a reputation as a liberal bomb thrower (and hater of hammering). And during Wednesday’s edition of The Last Word, he had his claws out for House Speaker Paul Ryan who earlier that day announced he was retiring. According to the MSNBC host, Ryan was a worse speaker than pedophile Dennis Hastert and the pre-Civil War speakers who owned slaves; all because “they were…

The New York Times' Erica Goode latched on to a scientific smear job involving global warming and polar bears, under the online headline, “Climate Change Denialists Say Polar Bears Are Fine. Scientists Are Pushing Back.” The text box was bluntly biased even for the Times: “Researchers chastised a Canadian zoologist’s blog for its falsehoods.”

Stirring the political controversy in the Vatican, New York Times Rome bureau chief Jason Horowitz once again gleefully pitted Pope Francis against “ultraconservative” Catholics in Tuesday’s “Pope Puts Caring for Migrants and Opposing Abortion on Equal Footing.” Horowitz used the Pope's newest apostolic exhortation to sharpen the conflict, crediting Francis with "citing vicious examples of…