Media Bias Debate

If  anyone in the liberal media has no business calling anyone a coward for refusing to take on people with opposing opinions, it's Keith Olbermann.  The fragile Countdown host is so defensive about his policy of inviting only yes-people on his show that, as noted here, he recently devoted an MSNBC promo to lamely explaining away his Bert Lahr imitation.But that didn't stop Olbermann on this…

Republicans are likely to go with Tampa, Florida, as the venue for their 2012 presidential nominating convention in part because evangelicals hate Mormons. That's the gospel truth, at least according to Chris Matthews, who yesterday went on a loopy rant that was pure bluster and completely unsubstantiated in its assertions.[MP3 audio available here; click play on the embedded video at right for…

Could the New York Times not find an outspoken critic of the Senate's new Cap and Trade bill? Either one could not be found, or they opted not to include such a critic in the paper's report on the unveiling of the legislation.The Times devoted 21 paragraphs to the new Kerry-Lieberman Cap and Trade bill -- proposed on Wednesday -- but did not even mention an actual critic of the legislation until…

Yesterday the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press released a poll finding "Broad Approval For New Arizona Immigration Law."While Republicans were the most supportive, a full 45 percent of Democrats and 64 percent of independents polled supported the law. When broken down to the particulars of the bill, there was even broader support. For example, 65 percent of Democrats and and 73…

The comparison of the results contained in the April 2010 Monthly Treasury Statement released this afternoon to April of last year is bad enough. But if the American people knew that April 2010 came in about a quarter-trillion dollars worse than both 2007 and 2008 with almost 40% less in tax collections, most of them would be appalled. Many more than are already doing so would be questioning what…

It doesn't seem like this exercise should be that tough. The government issues Daily Treasury Statements telling everybody what went in and out on a given business day. At the end of the month, the last Daily Treasury Statement has a record (admittedly jumbled and larded with lots of bureaucratic excess) of all receipts and disbursements for the month. The folks at the Congressional Budget…

Dan Rather just won’t go away nor update his obstinate refusal to acknowledge liberal media bias. Confronted with MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski’s observation that the mainstream media lack “balance” and convey “a liberal world view” (earlier NB item), Rather rejected the premise and offered up a banal defense: “What is the definition of liberal? I myself favor strong military, tight money, and clean…

Five weeks ago (covered at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), the Big Three Networks' combined evening news audiences dropped to below 20 million -- an audience about 5% less than what Matt Drudge in the summer of 2006 headlined as “TV’s Lowest Week.” Three weeks ago (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), their combined audience came in at 19.61 million, down over 12% from the previous year. For the week of…

If a conservative or Republican uttered the nonsense to be revealed shortly, we'd justifiably never hear the end of it on the late-night comedy shows and elsewhere. As it is, former car czar Steve Rattner's "creative" term for fibbing has and probably will continue to get little coverage outside of Detroit. Rattner's risible rendition of reality spewed forth before he spoke at a Federal…

Update - 5/11, 7:15 PM | Lachlan Markay: Associated Content responded to Mr. Schneker's allegations in an email. Details below.A conservative writer is calling for a boycott of the popular online news site Associated Content after it allegedly heavily edited or deleted much of his work, and refused to compensate him properly.  Marc Schenker, the writer who claims he was censored, says his…

President Barack Obama's second nominee to the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan, is drawing fire from both liberals and conservatives to such an extent that her challenge in the confirmation hearings "will be to show that while she may hail from Harvard, she has the heart of an empathetic, all-American patriot."At least that's Stuart Taylor Jr.'s take in a May 10 Newsweek "Web exclusive" that garnered…

Which is more newsworthy: hearsay accounts of racial slurs unsupported by video evidence of the alleged incident, or video of a protester calling for violent revolution against the federal government, the imposition of socialism, and the annexation of the Southwestern states for Mexico?If you chose the latter, you're probably not a journalist of the self-proclaimed "mainstream" variety. The…

On Friday, in the course of a general complaint about the relative lack of coverage of the flooding in Nashville and much of Tennessee, the Associated Press received a deserved compliment for its coverage from Investors Business Daily, which correctly implied that AP can't make its subscribers publish its output. But IBD missed one item, and understandably so. On Wednesday, the AP ran an article…