Media Bias Debate

What is it with the establishment press and communism? The earth's most murderous political philosophy and its most murderous practitioners still get undeserved and occasionally even complimentary attention, while their crimes against humanity get brushed aside, ignored, or downplayed. A Christmas Day item from Romania at the Associated Press illustrates the point. The first six of its eight…

On Sunday, Washington Post Fact Checker Glenn Kessler sat down with CSPAN’s Brian Lamb for a Q&A about the year’s worst political lies. While much of the hour-long interview focused on numerous statements made by Democrats and Republicans throughout 2014, Kessler claimed that both Republicans and Democrats have bought into the "myth of the liberal media." The Post fact checker argued that “…

In St. Louis County, police have arrested 19 year-old Joshua Williams and charged him (HT Gateway Pundit) with committing "1st degree arson, 2nd degree burglary and misdemeanor theft" at the QuikTrip convenience store in Berkeley, Missouri on Christmas Eve. Williams "has confessed to the crimes." The St. Louis Post-Dispatch gets today's prize for most absurd headline, as seen after the jump (…

What follows is an object lesson in why year-end best, worst and other lists shouldn't be published until the year actually ends. A Kwanzaa "parade" was held in Los Angeles yesterday. In reporting on the event, CBS Los Angeles published a work of fiction (saved here for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes) which absolutely belongs on any 2014 list of most embarrassing moments in…

As I noted almost two weeks ago, hundreds of protesters in Manhattan repeatedly shouted "What do we want? Dead Cops! When do we want it? Now!" during that city's version of the so-called "Justice For All" marches which took place in several locations around the nation on December 13. The New York Times failed to report the protesters' rants in its original coverage of the marches. The fact that…

Earlier this morning, I posted on Vermont's abandonment of its attempt to impose and implement a "single-payer" (i.e., government-controlled) healthcare system, and on how muted the press coverage has been. It's difficult to overstate how devastating the Green Mountain State's blowup is to the left's oft-stated long-term goal of imposing single-payer, occasionally referred to a "Medicare for all…

President Barack Obama, soon to be former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, former Congressman Barney Frank, and many other prominent Democrats and leftists have over the past several years declared that their ultimate goal is turn the U.S. healthcare system into a "single-payer," i.e., completely government-controlled, enterprise. That likely explains why the reaction to Vermont's abandonment…

When I first read about this, I thought that it had to be some kind of weird spoof. But it's not. Over the course of almost two excruciatingly tedious minutes complete with ominous piano-dominated background music, a recently created video intended to become a public service announcement (PSA) shows a teenage boy taking a gun out of a drawer in his parents' bedroom and bringing it to school. At…

Establishment press reporting has all too often been about perpetuating a narrative, even long after it has been proven false, than conveying facts and truth. Anyone arguing that 2014 has been one of the worst years ever for this growing trend won't get an argument here. An Associated Press poll about the top stories of the year got responses from 85 editors at subscribing AP outlets. Although…

Amazon founder and current Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos must be quite relieved that he passed on investing millions in Ezra Klein's pet project. Klein, the infamous founder and coordinator of the left-driven news-managing and manipulation effort known as JournoList, wanted the Post to invest $10 million in what the New York Times described early this year as "a new website dedicated to…

In New York City, police officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos were killed Saturday afternoon by a man who indicated online that his motivation was to seek revenge for the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Eric Garner on Staten Island. At the Daily Beast, M.L. Nestel didn't find it particularly difficult to find people who thought that the officers deserved to die, and almost…

In discussing a statewide ban on hydraulic fracturing announced Wednesday, the New York Daily News carried comments made by Howard Zucker, the state's Health Commissioner, about fracking's impact on public health. Zucker asked two rhetorical questions: "Would I live in a community with (fracking) based on the facts I have now?" and “Would I let my child play in a school field nearby or my family…

The establishment press is virtually giddy over New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's cowardly, self-serving decision to ban fracking in New York. It's cowardly because Cuomo is publicly pretending that he's only deferring to his environmental and health commissioners, when everyone with an ounce of sense knows that he's getting the recommendations he wanted. It's self-serving because it enhances his…

Appearing on Fox News's Hannity Thursday night, NewsBusters publisher and Media Research Center president Brent Bozell condemned the network news for its lack of coverage of the brutal oppression of Fidel Castro's communist regime in the wake of President Obama reopening diplomatic relations with Cuba: "[Castro] has been a mythological figure to the left-wing press since the 1950s. They – for 40…