Media Bias Debate

Once upon a time, liberals didn't much like Ronald Reagan - his policies, his ideology or even just because they thought he was a lousy executive and an "amiable dunce."  "The Tower commission did not find Reagan a lousy orator; they found him a lousy president," Rep. Barney Frank said of Reagan to Time magazine in the aftermath of the Iran-Contra Affair in 1987. And more recently, those on the…

There's something about the Tea Party movement that brings out the left's inner hypocrite. Case in point: the left's front runner for the "most egregiously offensive and derogatory commentator" award is now calling for civility in the public discourse. Mike Malloy took to his website on Monday to lament the "nasty, divisive, and uber-partisan" rhetoric in Washington. Who's to blame for all the…

After a bit of a respite primarily due to NBC's coverage of the Winter Olympics, the audience desertion from the Big 3 networks' evening news broadcasts has again resumed. Not that the first quarter of 2010 was all peaches and cream. Last week, Media Bistro noted that ABC's "World News Tonight" had "its lowest-rated first quarter ever." But the results for the first week of the second ratings…

It's incredible to see how many ways the mainstream media are able to analyze and dissect the Tea Party movement phenomenon on a regular basis. But lately it has been en vogue to challenge this movement on merits of race - a popular ad hominem talking point for opponents of the movement. However, the Associated Press, an organization known for its extensive fact checking of conservatives, took a…

Pop quiz: which of the following political candidates would you be less likely to vote for: one who had written things offensive to many women in a master's thesis, or one who was convicted of trying to solicit sex from a minor?If you think the felony conviction is a more condemnable offense for a political candidate, you may want to give up your dream job as a Huffington Post columnist. In the…

MSNBC on Tuesday announced that anchor David Shuster has been "suspended indefinitely" after filming a pilot at CNN. If this is the end of the liberal host's tenure on MSNBC, he'll leave behind a long legacy of viciously attacking "conservative fear mongering." During the Obama era, Shuster, supposedly a straight-news journalist, has been quick to deride the opponents of the President. On…

It's a simple law of economics, right?  If there's a demand for a certain service or good, that business has a strong shot at thriving. Since the now-defunct Air America shut down for the last time earlier this year, the casual observer must conclude that no one wanted to hear left-wing diatribes over the broadcast airwaves.  But that's not the case according to a panel on HLN's April 5 "The Joy…

Ann Coulter for one has refused to pour gasoline on the Voyeur fire - pledging her full support and offering praise for RNC Chairman Michael Steele. As Good Morning America's George Stephanopoulos so touchingly pointed out to Steele, a few Republican leaders have been publicly highly critical of Steele and according to a "poll of insiders" only 20 percent consider him an asset to the party. "…

There is hardly a more fitting figure to trumpet Old Media's fear of Internet-powered citizen journalism than Helen Thomas. The 89-year-old reporter has covered every president since Jack Kennedy. But when it comes to the inevitable decline of her brand of journalism, her fears are unfounded and misplaced."Helen Thomas," reported Lloyd Grove for the Daily Beast, "is worried that all the…

Near the end of the Saturday edition of Fox & Friends on Fox News, co-host Clayton Morris introduced a segment on the media's double standard when it comes to covering the tea party movement versus left-wing protestors: "Mainstream media casting tea party protesters as violent and racist, the same media that characterized leftist protests against President Bush as patriotic."Morris brought on…

I'm sure they'll have an excuse for this, but whatever it is, it won't fly with yours truly. Saturday, the New York Times published a feature called "The Pay at the Top." Instead of preparing the usual "Who made the most?" list, it instead disclosed the "pay for 200 chief executives at 199 public companies that filed their annual proxies by March 27 and had revenue of at least $6.3 billion."…

Forget those polls, like the current one conducted for CBS News, that show most Americans disapprove of President Barack Obama's health care scheme.  And ignore accounts like the one in today's Politico highlighting the grief some Democratic congressmen are getting for voting with Obama on health care.  No, focus instead on stories like the one in today's print and Web edition of the Chicago…

Facts, apparently, will not interfere with the left's quest to slander Sean Hannity. What's worse, many of the mistruths are being peddled by Hannity's cable news competition, adding financial gain to the cheap political incentives for delegitimizing him.Even after facts debunked the bogus claim that Hannity had improperly used funds raised by the Freedom Alliance charity, MSNBC libtalker Ed…