Media Bias Debate

In case you haven’t noticed, the government shutdown is all the GOP’s fault.  Today’s Chicago Tribune wanted to make sure readers knew that with a front-page headline titled “Hard-right bloc sticks to its guns: Shutdown stalemate continues as lawmakers in safe seats hold sway.” The article reports that some House Republicans “have chosen to defy Washington’s traditional norms of conversation and…

Poor Carl Bernstein: he's suffering a bad bout of MSM nostalgia. He longs for the good old media days when the news was dominated by the likes of the New York Times, the Washington Post and the then three broadcast networks. They could slam Republicans with impunity, without any conservative media counterweight. In covering the shutdown, today's media culture, kvetches Carl, is just too darn…

Evidence of testiness on the Democratic side of the 17% government shutdown continues to accumulate. Today, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney had a tense exchange with ABC's Jonathan Karl, who was apparently so taken aback by Carney's answer to another reporter that he interjected himself into the dialog — to correct Carney about what House Speaker John Boehner said earlier today about his…

Earlier today, Matt Hadro at NewsBusters noted how CNN's reporting on the government's 17% shutdown has been incredibly one-sided ("CNN Keeps Pounding GOP: 'Holding the American People Hostage,' Wanting to 'Destroy' Government"). It's as if they're on a different continent. Perhaps that's partially explains why the cable network somehow placed Hong Kong in Brazil earlier today (graphic is at…

In a story published early this morning by Manu Raju at the Politico which is primarily about Senate Majority Harry Reid's plans to aggressively pursue reelection in 2016, the Nevada senator took shots at the establishment press for "trying so hard to be fair that you are unfair." Proving Reid wrong in real time, Raju failed to mention Reid's response last week to a question by Dana Bash at CNN…

In the midst of a federal government shutdown wherein he's refusing to negotiate with congressional Republicans, President Barack Obama had time to hold forth with his thoughts on the name of the Washington Redskins, telling the Associated Press on Saturday that he would "think about changing" the name were he owner of the NFL franchise. Of course, the Big Three networks and major newspapers…

(UPDATE, 11:40 a.m.: AmberAlert.gov is working again.) In yet another news story which has bubbled up through social media and the blogosphere and which will test the establishment press's willingness to ignore obvious news, the Obama adminstration's Department of Justice under Attorney General Eric Holder has taken AmberAlert.gov offline. To the extent that it interrupts what DOJ has…

Lake Mead National Recreation Area in Nevada is closed during the 17% government shutdown. That was also the case during the last major government shutdown in 1995-1996, but private homeowners on the area's land were allowed to stay. Not this time. In a development which the national establishment press has ignored, a Democratic presidential administration is doing what it has constantly told…

Never mind the government shutdown. What's really important in Obamaland is apparently whether football's Washington Redskins keep their Redskins team nickname. The Associated Press's Julie Pace, with help from Joseph White and Darlene Superville, has an 880-word writeup on this breathtakingly important subject. Too bad the entire premise — that Indians "feel pretty strongly" about mascots…

White House staff aren’t the only ones looking for sob stories about folks affected by the government shutdown.  The media are doing what they can to assist. Columnist Phil Kadner of the Southtown Star, a publication of the Chicago Sun-Times, lends a hand with “Shutdown becomes real for local residents.” The article begins: Edgar Mullins, of Richton Park, and Justin Jones, of Chicago Heights…

Early Friday afternoon, USA Today's Tim Mullaney excused HealthCare.gov's "glitches," confidently predicted that "they'll get fixed" (in about two months!) and pronounced the enterprise "an out-of-the-box success for consumers shopping for health insurance" which will "sell tons of insurance," even though he had to go to a canned calculator found elsewhere to do much of his work. As to "selling…

(UPDATE: Chad Henderson has locked down his Twitter account. His Instagram account remains, for now.) Earlier today, I noted (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog) that "Obamacare Poster Boy" Chad Henderson, who was written up in the Washington Post, Huffington Post and several other news outlets, and who at one point was scheduled to appear on a Health and Human Services Department conference call (…

(UPDATE: See Chad's response to Washington Post's Sarah Kliff at the end of this post.) If what Reason's Peter Suderman is reporting is correct — and he certainly appears to have done the kind of digging you would expect conscientious journalists to do — the establishment press's lionization of Chad Henderson the Fantabulous Obamacare Enrollee is about to fall apart. Suderman spoke at length…

On Thursday, MSNBC's Chuck Todd, in the introduction to his "Daily Rundown" program, characterized both the response to the Obama administration's barricading of the World War II Memorial and Harry Reid's response to a question about helping children with cancer by funding the National Institutes for Health ("Why would we want to do that?") as "manufactured outrage." World War II ended in 1945,…