Media Bias Debate

Yesterday the Gallup organization released a poll showing that Americans trust Republicans over Democrats on most major issues heading into the general election season. Today the same polling outfit released a poll that found a large number of Americans blame George W. Bush for the faltering economy. Guess which one Gallup partner USA Today hyped?Here's how USA Today staffer Susan Page began her…

Talk about an in-kind contribution. In a short item about a Democratic Governors Association election complaint about Ohio GOP gubernatorial candidate John Kasich, the Associated Press's Julie Carr Smyth showed that she is willfully ignoring Buckeye State reality, or has been living a hermit's existence for the past few months. In describing Kasich's standing against Democratic incumbent…

How the once mighty have fallen. In the midst of covering the performance of the broadcast networks last week, David Bauder at the Associated Press noted the following (HT Kevin Alloca at Media Bistro): Meanwhile, the NBC, ABC and CBS evening newscasts combined for a dubious record last week: the average of 18.7 million people who watched one of the three shows last week was the smallest audience…

Washington Post columnist and incoming CNN prime-time talk-show host Kathleen Parker is still auditioning for liberal-media accolades. In Wednesday's Post she offered another shovel of her frenzied distaste for prayer and G-O-D talk in public as she dismissed the Glenn Beck rally, especially the notion that Beck or Sarah Palin could blame the news media for hostility and bias. The media made…

On Monday's Good Morning America, ABC's George Stephanopoulos played up how President Obama "blamed many in the media for perpetuating...myths" such as he was born outside the United States, isn't a Christian, and/or is a Muslim. "You can't blame the President for wanting this to go away."Stephanopoulos raised the President's remarks about "these kind of myths," as he put it, near the end of a…

This past weekend, intrepid journalists at the New York Post and NorthJersey.com released information they unearthed about proposed Ground Zero Mosque "organizer" Sharif El-Gamal and frontman Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, respectively, that the wire services, the New York Times and the national TV networks would likely have run with by now had the items related to a major church or synagogue. But…

Defenders of controversial imam Feisal Abdul Rauf have been touting his past efforts in offering counterterrorism advice to the FBI as a way to illustrate his bridge-building intentions.  Much like other reports, they tend to gloss over the more controversial aspects of Rauf's statements.  But, as is typical with the Ground Zero mosque imam, it can be demonstrated that he is frequently speaking…

It would appear that the development of persuasive rhetoric began and ended during the 2007-2008 presidential campaign of now-President Barack Obama. That's the nearly inevitable conclusion one must reach based on a breathtakingly absurd contention in a (I can't believe I'm typing this) "Breaking News Update" that appeared at the Associated Press at 3:40 p.m. yesterday. When Glenn Beck spoke…

An interesting character made an appearance in a Saturday evening Associated Press report by Cristian Salazar on Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf: It's not a one-time accident. The same paragraph carried at Google's version of the story has the same extra character: The question mark is actually well-placed, as the following paragraphs from Salazar's report demonstrate (bolds are mine throughout this…

It will be “very difficult for Democrats to demonize” George W. Bush “again” during this campaign season, liberal nationally syndicated columnist Mark Shields despaired on Friday’s Inside Washington, because he’s “a circumspect and discreet former President.” Quite unlike, he didn’t say, the often boorish Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.Reacting to Vice President Joe Biden’s indictment of the…

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's first full day as the only person in the whole wide world with any kind of influence over what happens in the economy didn't go too badly. That's the impression one might get from consuming two Friday Associated dispatches and a related AP Video. Bernanke apparently took full charge of anything and everything having to do with the economy on Thursday evening. As…

Just like NBC and ABC this morning, CBS’s The Early Show had a hostile take on Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally scheduled for Saturday on the Mall in Washington, D.C. Correspondent Whit Johnson labeled Beck a “controversial conservative,” event speaker Alveda King (a niece of Martin Luther King, Jr.) a “longtime advocate for conservative causes,” and suggested that the fact that some…

Sometimes you just have to chuckle at the transparent motivations of business writers in the establishment press. Two Associated Press reports from this afternoon, one from Stephen Bernard and another much lengthier piece from Jeannine Aversa, attempt to set the template for Friday morning's reportage: Despite all the bad news, including a serious downward revision to second-quarter economic…

Wasn't comparing your political opponents to Nazis once a no-no? I mean, just remember how upset the liberal concern police would get if some wayward individual at a Tea Party event in some random place in the United States had a homemade sign protesting President Barack Obama and invoked Nazi Germany symbolism? Well, you would think - or at least expect a national TV host (even with…