Media Bias Debate

It's a variation on the old riddle, "What's black and white, but read all over?" If you change one word and add two others, the answer to the resulting question -- "What's still mostly black and white, but red all over?" -- would be, based on just-released information about their daily circulation, "all but one of the nation's top 25 newspapers turning in comparative numbers." The figures come…

Where is Tina Fey now that we need her? Martha Coakley is the front-runner for the Dem nomination for Ted Kennedy's old Senate seat.  In a recent debate, asked about her lack of foreign policy experience, the first credential Coakley offered in response was that "I have a sister who lives overseas, and she's been in England and now lives in the Middle East."

Let's say, hypothetically, someone was to make a disparaging statement about Fox News and conclude as a news outlet it is way outside of mainstream political thought. Well, then the follow-up appropriate question could be where does that put Fox News' competitors who get just a fraction of the cable news juggernaut's ratings? Michael Wolff, a contributing editor and columnist Vanity Fair and…

CNN's Rick Sanchez often describes his Newsroom segment as a "national conversation."  Increasingly, however, his program primarily consists of Sanchez mouthing current liberal talking points.So it was today, as he excitedly asked viewers:Do you want the public option that could make health insurance more competitive and cheaper, because it's looking like we may get it in some form at this point…

CNN’s Rick Sanchez shocked his colleague Kyra Phillips on Monday’s Newsroom, after agreeing with a New Mexico hotel owner who had asked his Latino employee to use an unaccented version of his name: “My real name is Ricardo Leon Sanchez de Reinaldo. I don’t use it because I want to be respectful of this wonderful country that allowed us as Hispanics to come here, and I think it’s easier if someone…

This wouldn't be particularly important if not for the fact that the press made a point of criticizing our previous president for overindulging in exercise and recreation and supposedly "vacationing" too often at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. But they did, so a Tweet from CBS White House correspondent Mark Knoller is worth noting: Politico's Click blog picked up the story and put this twist on…

I rise today in defense of bacon, as well as consuming hamburgers on Independence Day.  And, most importantly, in defense of my mother's awe-inspiring pot roast.Mika Brzezinski, co-host of MSNBC's Morning Joe, wants the government to make these classic American foodstuffs, as well as soda, alcohol, and being overweight, cost more.  I apologize in advance for the long length of the transcript…

It would appear that the Associated Press has nominated Calvin Woodward to be their go-to guy for "Fact Check" pieces that blow up political arguments and assertions by the White House and partisan Democrats. In late April (covered at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), Woodward, in an item headlined "Obama disowns deficit he helped shape," blistered Barack Obama and his administration for its attempt…

President Obama was at Democratic Party fundraising events for incumbent Democratic Governor Deval Patrick in Massachusetts Friday night. The Boston Herald's Hillary Chabot described the attendance at one of the events (HT Jules Crittenden, who is a Herald editor, via Instapundit) as "barely half-full with 125 deep-pocketed Democrats" in the second paragraph of her report ("President Obama: ‘…

Either LA Times op-ed writer Peter Dreier lives in a cave, or he's all too willing to spread falsehoods to defend an organization where he once served as a consultant. Perhaps it's a little of both. In that Thursday op-ed ("The war on ACORN; Conservatives are distorting and playing up the community organizing group's so-called scandals"), Dreier parroted ACORN CEO's now-discredited claims that "…

It would appear that the Apparatchik Press -- er, the Associated Press -- thinks that part of its job is to soften the impact of embarrassing admissions made by Obama administration members. Take the wire service's Thursday afternoon AP report by Jim Kuhnhenn on Council of Economic Advisers' chair Christine Romer's observations about the stimulus package. Romer said (in AP's words) that "the…

Big shock here - MSNBC's Rachel Maddow agrees with the White House, which is the Fox News Channel is not really a news organization. Sarcasm aside, on her Oct. 23 MSNBC program, Maddow attempted to justify the Obama administration's tack over recent months with Fox News. She laid out a series of events over the past few days that indicated an escalation of the feud between Fox News and the White…

“They report and the White House decides it's not fair. The President's feud with the Fox News Channel,” Katie Couric teased at the top of Friday's CBS Evening News in the first broadcast network newscast foray into the subject. Plugging the story before an ad break, she flipped the emphasis on which party is acting unfairly: “The White House singles out and freezes out the Fox News Channel. Is…

The cat is out of the bag at the New York Times. The Times has exposed, albeit passively, the true motivation behind the White House's Fox News attacks. Contrary to the administration's claims, it is deriding Fox not because it doesn't report the news, but rather because it does.It is news, after all, when an organization potentially receiving billions in federal funds aids and abets what it…