Media Bias Debate

On Thursday, the government reported that the nation's economy turned in yet another quarter of poor economic performance, estimating that its gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 1.5 percent in the third quarter. The business press almost universally downplayed the news, and told readers that the fourth quarter will be better. No one talked about how much the tepid growth of the…

Many of the state cooperative health insurers, or "co-ops," set up under the provisions of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, have gotten into serious financial trouble quite quickly. Almost half have cracked up completely. Specifically, as noted at Forbes.com on Thursday morning, "[O]f the 24 Obamacare co-ops funded with federal tax dollars, one (Vermont’s) never got approval to sell…

Politico Magazine runs a long article by Alex Thompson today with the provocative headline: "Could America Elect a Mentally Ill President? Yes. In fact, we probably already did." The story discusses the possible mental issues, and documented consumption of drugs used to treat mental illness, of numerous politicians, including several presidents, among them JFK, LBJ and Nixon. But here's the—…

Here's what should be an easy question: With data which has already been seasonally adjusted, what's more important — a) the fact that an index is a) up by 3 percent in the past year or b) the fact that it has fallen 5 percent in the past four months? The correct answer is obviously b) — unless you're a writer for the Associated Press whose mission is to convince readers that the housing market…

People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. And people who ridicule the level of others' speech patterns should check theirs first. CNBC didn't do that. Instead, on Thursday, as I noted in a previous NewsBusters post, it childishly rushed out a grade-level evaluation of the Republican presidential candidates' speech patterns during the first three debates, including the Wednesday train wreck…

On Friday evening, the “big three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC all ignored the latest dump of Hillary Clinton’s e-mails from the State Department that included the retroactive classification of 268 e-mails that now makes for one out of every 16 e-mails that have been “released” to the public since her private e-mail server scandal was unearthed in March.

In a letter to NBC News president Andrew Lack on Friday, Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus informed the network “that pending further discussion between the Republican National Committee (RNC) and our presidential campaigns, we are suspending the partnership with NBC News for the Republican primary debate at the University of Houston on February 26, 2016.”

While much of the media ruled that Jeb Bush did not have a satisfactory debate performance on Wednesday, the sentiment stretched even into the late-night comedy shows as ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel panned the “embarrassing” Bush on Thursday for attacking Rubio on an issue “that literally no one outside of Florida cares about” concerning his Senate attendance record.

The government's Personal Income and Outlays report for September bore more evidence of a slowing economy. Consumer spending rose by only 0.1 percent, trailing expectations of 0.2 percent. That's troubling news, given that the optimists believe that strong consumer spending will supposedly drive stronger fourth-quarter economic growth. Lucia Mutikani's coverage at Reuters made a common error in…

CNN’s senior media correspondent, Brian Stelter, during Thursday’s AC360, lamented how Republican presidential candidates have often attacked the liberal media “to deflect tough, unwelcome questions,” arguing their conservative supporters have caused “more polarization” in the electorate by not trusting the media.

Friday's Morning Joe featured a discussion by the roundtable on the subject of the debates and the fairness needed for them. While Newsbusters previously discussed Morning Joe's discussion on the bias of moderators, Morning Joe also discussed their surprise and support of Dr. Ben Carson, who has come out leading the change to reform these debates.

Making his now semi-frequent appearance on a primetime MSNBC show, lefty blogger Charles Pierce was on Thursday’s All In to trash the 2016 Republican presidential candidates as merely “a bunch of unruly, nasty children” during Wednesday’s CNBC debate and suggested that “the next one” should take place “in a sandbox.”

On Friday, NBC’s Today tried to spin Republicans objecting to CNBC’s disastrous debate moderators as a problem for the GOP. Co-host Matt Lauer declared: “Grand old problems. Republican candidates reportedly planning to meet about changing how future debates are organized...”

When this NewsBuster began preparing today's item, the focus was going to be on Joe Scarborough's statement on today's Morning Joe that "90% of the people in our business vote for Democrats and Democratic primaries." Not that it was something we didn't already know [though query whether even 10% of MSMers are Republicans], but refreshing to hear it so starkly stated. But preparing the video clip…