Media Bias Debate

New York Times media reporter Jeremy Peters issued a warning to young journalists on Wednesday’s front page, “Covering 2012, Youths on the Bus”: There are partisan bloggers out there who are out to embarrass mainstream journalists. Ironic, given that mainstream journalists have been doing just that to conservative politicians for decades. A group of five fresh-faced reporters from National…

Two weeks ago (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), yours truly pointed out how establishment press coverage of the bankruptcy of Massachusetts-based Evergreen Solar had emphasized its Bay State assistance, and only rarely brought up how it benefitted by being able to sell solar panels it otherwise would probably not have bothered to produce to projects benefitting from American Recovery and…

Yesterday on CNN's The Situation Room, the story of President Barack Obama's uncle's arrest on charges of driving under the influence was reported.  Make that Barack Obama's half-uncle, as anchor Wolf Blitzer and correspondent Brian Todd identified him that way at least nine times.  Todd even presented a wall chart detailing "a complicated and very fascinating family tree."  CNN and Blitzer…

Poor President Obama. There's only so much he can do to lift the economy. He's tried so much already, yet somehow it just hasn't worked. Now his options are limited by those darned Republican demands for "fiscal austerity" and a "tight debt ceiling" (of "only" $2.4 trillion) which was only raised by enough to get him through his reelection effort (in 14-1/2 months). This is the utter garbage…

The plot thickens. On Sunday (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), I noted that "GOP politicians aren't welcome in this year's Labor Day parade" in Wausau, Wisconsin, because, according to the Marathon County Central Labor Council, which until today apparently thought it was the only sponsor of said parade, "organizers choose not to invite elected officials who have openly attacked worker's rights…

In his Friday column ("Failing Forward"), published in Saturday's print edition, the New York Times's Charles Blow really blew it in attempting to relay an abortion-related statistic from the abortion-supportive Alan Guttmacher Institute. Blow wrote (shown here) that "the unintended pregnancy rate has jumped 50 percent since 1994." The Times has since corrected the column to reflect what the…

In the days leading up to Hurricane Irene's march through the Northeast,  journalists repeatedly suggested that the storm was yet more evidence of climate change. "The scale of Hurricane Irene, which could cause more extensive damage along the Eastern Seaboard than any storm in decades, is reviving an old question: are hurricanes getting worse because of human-induced climate change?" asked…

Maybe AP stands for "Alternative Planet." In an early version of Julie Pace's coverage of President Obama's selection of Alan Krueger to be the next head of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, the following paragraph appeared (bolds are mine):

The childishness on the left in Wisconsin continues. In Wausau, GOP politicians aren't welcome in this year's Labor Day parade, as noted in a news brief at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (bolds are mine):

When I first saw a brief Associated Press report asserting that Rick Perry, at an event in Des Moines, Iowa today claimed, in AP's words, that "he's created 1 million jobs while governor of Texas," I thought to myself, "Wow, that's a pretty egotistical thing to say -- as if he did it all by himself." Then I remembered that I was reading an AP report. Of course Perry didn't say that, and,…

Attacks on Republicans like Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Sarah Palin that compare them to the Three Stooges are just a sign that the liberal media is getting worried that their champion Barack Obama stands a good shot of losing next year's election. What's more, any Republican who gets attacked as an intellectual lightweight should "wear it as a badge of honor." That's what NewsBusters…

I didn't go to the Catholic News Agency's web site tonight looking for a media bias column; I usually go there to find "positivity" posts for my home blog. When I clicked on an item with an intriguing title ("The Pope's Young Army"), I expected that the author, Father Robert Barron, would regale me with inspiring vignettes from the Pope's recently completed World Youth Day in Madrid. Well, at…

In his coverage of the Department of Labor's weekly report on unemployment claims this morning, the Associated Press's Christopher Rugaber, after noting how initial claims filed by Communications Workers of America members who are on strike against Verizon (more on that later) inflated this week's and last week's results, wrote that "excluding the work stoppage, layoffs appear to be stabilizing…

The company whose unofficial motto is "Don't Be Evil," apparently has a new commandment: Thou shalt not give discounts to churches. Tech giant Google has an entire suite of software, Google Apps,that it offers for businesses and non-profits. It used to be that Google offered the software, including GMail, for free or at a discount for non-profits, including churches. But back in March, the…