Media Bias Debate

It seems that Associated Press Business Writer David K. Randall made a bad call yesterday. But he only has himself to blame for engaging in what he should have known was wishful thinking. Shortly after the government's report on economic growth during the fourth quarter of 2010 came in with an annualized 3.2% reading, Randall put out this this short report: Stocks edge up after stronger…

Promising his Twitter followers a look at "Rand Paul's Abortion Hypocrisy," Newsweek staffer Ben Adler linked to a January 28 story he wrote for the magazine's The Gaggle blog misleadingly entitled "Rand Paul Wants to Ban Abortions and End Birthright Citizenship."

Good Morning America's George Stephanopoulos and Jake Tapper on Friday addressed the fact that Barack Obama's New press secretary, Jay Carney, is the husband of ABC reporter Claire Shipman. Stephanopoulos, discussing the couple, declared, "He and Claire actually appeared many times on This Week when I was the anchor. And, of course, Claire will now not be covering the White House."…

To those who follow the news fairly closely and look at underlying reports, CNN's email alerts are sometimes entertaining. Much less frequently are the accurate and informative. Even though they tend not to realize it, those who don't follow the news closely and attempt to stay informed by relying on CNN's alerts are regularly deceived by the network that used to call itself "the most trusted…

As it turns out, mainstream media outlets that lauded President Barack Obama's State of the Union speech as "downright Reaganesque" might be on to something. While ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and MSNBC exalted the commander-in-chief, at least one observer charged the Democratic president with crafting a speech that was "tantamount to plagiarism." In a column on the U.S. News site, presidential…

"[F]or all the surface civility [of the State of the Union], Obama wants to pick a fight, or at least draw a stark contrast, between his jobs-centric philosophy and the GOP’s determination to cut government first and ask questions later." That's how Politico's Glenn Thrush and Carrie Budoff Brown described the main difference between the president and his Republican congressional opposition…

None of the broadcast news programs from Monday evening and Tuesday morning covered the 2011 "March for Life" in Washington, DC, a pro-life rally that reportedly drew at least tens of thousands of attendees. Neither NBC, ABC, nor CBS gave any coverage Monday to the march on their respective evening news programs; none of the networks covered the story Tuesday morning. The New York Times did…

On Sunday evening, an event in Washington preemptively made mincemeat of the usual press claims that "thousands" would participate in the next day's March for Life. The next day at the Washington Post, Michelle Boorstein and Ben Pershing followed form ("Thousands of abortion opponents rally in march on Mall"), but did make an interesting, seemingly reluctant observation: "Some attending the…

What's with the New York Times and its inability to practice what it preaches when it comes to avoiding gun-filled images and rhetoric?  A few days ago I noted how the Times had placed a bullet-riddled ad for a violent video game right on its online op-ed page. Now comes this Times headline: "Republicans’ Budget Man Draws Fire".  That is of course a metaphorical invocation of someone who by…

In a Monday Associated Press dispatch, reporter Tom Krisher virtually celebrated the idea that Government/General Motors "may be Number 1 again," with happy talk of "dethroning" and "overtaking" Toyota. Nowhere did Krisher mention the inconvenient fact that Toyota's revenues dwarf GM's to the point where comparing unit sales is an absurd waste of time. Specifically:

MSNBC abruptly ended the run of Keith Olbermann on Friday, bringing to a close an era in which the left-wing host compared conservatives to Nazis, accused them of "murderous deceit," of "urinating on the Constitution" and told President George W. Bush to "shut the Hell up!" Olbermann certainly became more vitriolic as the years went by, but back in 1998, he frothed about special prosecutor…

Last Wednesday I wrote about a left-wing anti-Wal-Mart group in Washington, D.C. that published a flyer depicting a crosshairs on the Wal-Mart smiley face icon and called for a "march on the developer's house" in Northwest D.C. after dark on Thursday the 20th. [That flyer has since been scrubbed from the WalMartFreeDC.org website, but you can see a screen capture of it below the page break…

In an Associated Press report by Patrick Walters yesterday afternoon, the following two reasons were offered as to why the Philadelphia abortion "clinic" operated by Dr. Kermit Gosnell, who was arrested and charged earlier this week "with murdering seven babies and one woman who went to him for an abortion," had not been inspected since 1993: Democratic former Governor Ed Rendell, who left…

Editor's Note: The initial post included an incorrect video embed. The correct video has now been inserted. We apologize for the error. While mainstream media outlets repeatedly fail to question flawed health care cost estimates, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell exposed the biased coverage on the January 21 "Fox & Friends." "This proves why they're not the mainstream media," asserted…