Media Bias Debate

Yesterday, Media Research Center (MRC) President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell sat down in the MRC studio for a Skype interview with Breitbart.tv's "B-cast." [see video embed below the page break]The topic: the latest MRC special report, "Omitting for Obama," which is a study of four stories --- Van Jones, Anita Dunn, ACORN, and ClimateGate -- "highlighted by the New Media in 2009 that…

Bad content? Bad business model?  No, those reasons aren't why Air America is no longer with us. Air America, a radio network advertised as the next talk radio juggernaut in 2004, was supposed to revolutionize the format and provide a "counterweight" for those left-of-center politically. But there's another reason according to HLN host and "The View" panelist Joy Behar. In the usual fashion of…

Sometimes getting hung up on percentage increases causes one to miss what's going on with the actual numbers. Such is the case in a January 26 front page story by USA Today's Richard Wolf. USAT's is the only recent original coverage I have found thus far relating to increases in the national welfare rolls during the recession. (An unbylined story at UPI merely reports on what USAT's Wolf wrote…

The story behind Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow's arrival into this world is remarkable.So-called "women's groups" would seem to prefer that as many Americans as possible not know the story about the courageous and faith-based decision Tebow's mother made to carry her pregnancy to term. That's the only plausible reason why they are opposing a 30-second Focus on the Family (FOTF) ad scheduled to…

On his segment of CNN Newroom today, anchor Ali Velshi cited a CNN/Opinion Research poll showing that only a quarter of Americans believe Obama's stimulus program has wasted little or no money.  He then set up an interview with a pro-stimulus academic:Let's talk about this with Kenneth Rogoff, professor of public policy and economics at Harvard University. Ken, you have looked at this very, very…

Building on Brad Wilmouth's critique at NewsBusters of Keith Olbermann's disgraceful treatment of Scott Brown's U.S. Senate victory in Massachusetts, Johnny Dollar (HT Taxman Blog) measured the coverage of the victory/concession speeches of Brown and his opponent Martha (or is it Marcia?) Coakley. Imagine my non-surprise when I saw the results (graph follows the jump): During Tuesday night's…

If Ellie Light is indeed a Democratic operative, she is only the proverbial tip of the party's astroturfing iceberg. Patterico's investigative work, which was also at the forefront of the blogosphere's efforts to expose Light, have revealed an even greater effort at manufacturing the appearance of public support for Democratic policies.Organizing for America and the Democratic Party each have…

Poor Joe Klein wishes he could give a lecture to average Americans -- the "Too Dumb to Thrive" who probably don't read his magazine's Swampland blog anyway -- on the virtues of Obamanomics. Of course, they'd probably be too stupid to understand the enlightened Mr. Anonymous, especially Fox News viewers. Indeed, at least in Klein's mind, these alleged ignorant boobs are practically an existential…

I don't know why I'm relaying this to readers. After all, according to former White House Communications Director Anita "Mao Inspires Me" Dunn, it's not coming from a real news organization. Her successor, Dan Pfeiffer, agrees. So does David Axelrod. But on the off chance that what follows might actually mean something, here is an excerpt from a lengthy piece of investigative journalism from Fox…

It's amazing how Bernard Condon and Tim Paradis of the Associated Press managed to hang the same label on totally opposite political positions in their report on the situation in the stock market late this afternoon.According to the AP pair, Scott Brown's U.S. Senate win in Massachusetts was due to a "wave of populism," at the same time as President Obama is supposedly planning to use "populist…

Rush Limbaugh is so reviled by the left, that even when he agrees with liberals and issues facts supporting their arguments, they criticize him and demand an apology.The latest such group to deride Limbaugh for supposedly offensive comments that they themselves have supported is the Anti-Defamation League. The ADL has called on Limbaugh to apologize for suggesting that the Obama Administration's…

At NewsBusters last night, Noel Sheppard posted about a UK Daily Mail report that "A scientist responsible for a key 2007 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report warning Himalayan glaciers would be completely melted by 2035 has admitted that the claim was made to put political pressure on world leaders." Noel also noted that U.S. media coverage of this damning admission…

A not-so-funny thing happened on the way to the recovery this week: The U.S. Department of Labor reported on Thursday that initial claims for unemployment benefits jumped "unexpectedly" by 36,000 to 482,000, when analysts had predicted a slight drop. What's more, it turns out that data reported in previous weeks was understated because of "administrative issues" relating to paperwork processing…

In a Page C1 column in Friday's Washington Post about the National Enquirer's plans to apply for a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the John Edwards-Rielle Hunter affair and love child, Howard Kurtz delivers a completely inexcusable pass to his fellow alleged journalists in the establishment media (bold is mine, internal link is in original): When the Enquirer first reported in 2007 that…