Media Bias Debate

In an interview with AlterNet's Don Hazen on Tuesday, MSNBC host Cenk Uygur slammed Fox News and bragged how he would take them on in the ratings: "For so long, they have controlled the national conversation....I want to drain them of that power. I want to put them back in the cave they came from....I also plan to beat them in the ratings and make them fear me." Uygur, who also hosts the…

What would be worse: if Norah actually believes it--or if she doesn't? Norah O'Donnell has claimed that the Washington Post and the New York Times provide straight-up information, without bias, of the sort that would be appealing to members of the putatively non-partisan "No Labels" group. Norah's mind-boggling assertion came on today's Morning Joe during a discussion of AOL's acquisition…

UPDATE: The full text of the referenced Dallas Morning News item, courtesy of Rich Noyes at the Media Research Center, is here (posted for fair use and discussion purposes). While looking for something else, I accidentally stumbled across a 2007 item in my blog's archives that makes the current soft media treatment of the Muslim Brotherhood even more outrageous than it already appears. In…

On the eve of the late Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday, the panel at Fox News Channel's "Fox News Watch" discussed the bias the mainstream media exhibited against the 40th president during and after his term in office. Panelist Jim Pinkerton even made a passing reference to the Media Research Center's special report on the media's anti-Reagan bias, "Rewriting Reagan." "I didn't need to look…

Reporting on President Obama's speech to the Chamber of Commerce Monday, MSNBC's Contessa Brewer sloppily labeled the Chamber as "conservative" in narrating the conflict between the business federation and the President. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, though it may have enjoyed the "conservative" label in the past, has supported major liberal legislation over the past few years in the name of…

MSNBC anchor Thomas Roberts on Tuesday argued that, based on Barack Obama's record, it would be fair to label the President a "fairly conservative Democrat." Talking to Ashley Bell, a Georgia politician who left the Democratic Party to become a Republican, the host listed several examples that  he suggested could, at the very least, make the President a "centrist." Bell argued that Obama's…

Today on CNN's Newsroom, anchor Kyra Phillips reported on "Confession: A Roman Catholic App," available from iTunes.  Describing herself as  a  "woman of the cloth," Phillips claimed the app meant ". . .you don't have to go to church. You don't have to go see the priest. All you do is you go on to this app. . ."  She also said the app is endorsed by the Vatican. She was wrong on all counts. …

The search for ways to rehabilitate the Obama administration in the eyes of the public is seemingly a never-ending enterprise at the Associated Press. Oh, they slip up occasionally. Late last week (covered yesterday at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), in an item primarily about how Congress really, really can't stop planned stimulus spending (uh-huh), the wire service's Brett J. Blackledge let…

Say you're a journalist and you're writing a story on the retirement of an 9-term congresswoman with:

On Monday's "Morning Joe," co-host Mika Brzezinski launched into a passionate defense of President Obama's handling of tough press coverage in 2008. Joe Scarborough and Mark Halperin retorted that Obama received soft coverage on the campaign trail, and has only recently learned how to face tough interviews. Brzezinski apparently thinks that is "revisionist thinking." "He was raked over…

According to Brett J. Blackledge at the Associated Press, when it comes to unspent stimulus money, cue the MC Hammer ("U Can't Touch This") and go away. In a Friday "analysis" in the wire service's "Spin Meter" category (HT Sweetness & Light), Blackledge, using words which clearly communicate which side he's on, in essence tells those whose goal it is to reduce federal spending to a more…

April 1984 was the U.S. economy's 19th post-recession month while Ronald Reagan was President. It was a month during which the government initially reported that the unemployment rate remained at 7.7%, while the number of jobs added was 269,000. By the time the government made all its subsequent revisions over the next few years, the final jobs-added figure was 363,000. On May 5, 1984, in an…

Someone needs to tell the Associated Press's Jeannine Aversa and Christopher Rugaber that just because the number of unemployed people declines, it doesn't mean that they "found work." That must be what the pair believes. Their error-riddled and suspect supposition-driven Friday afternoon report, whose title predictably focused on the unemployment-rate drop while ignoring the pathetic…

Lila Rose's LiveAction.org went into overdrive yesterday. LiveAction videos released earlier this week (with both edited and unedited versions) exposed personnel at Planned Parenthood clinics in Perth Amboy, New Jersey and Richmond, Virginia as all too willing to help provide abortions, birth control, and other "reproductive health services" to underage hookers in a pimp's employ while…