Media Bias Debate

After another round of attacks from the White House, this time from higher levels of the Obama administration, Brit Hume, a senior political analyst for Fox News, went to bat for his network. On the Oct. 19 broadcast of Fox News Channel's "Special Report with Bret Baier," Hume gave his best effort to rationalize why White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Obama Senior Advisor David Axelrod…

Though its $1.4 trillion red-ink result was mostly known well ahead of its final issuance, the Treasury Department either conveniently got its year-end accounting work done in time for a Friday afternoon release of the final Monthly Treasury Statement, or held it until that time. Last year's report was released on Wednesday, October 15. The final statement shows receipts of $2.105 trillion, "…

On his segment of today's CNN Newsroom, anchor Rick Sanchez went for the hat trick, likening Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio to the infamous Theophilus “Bull” Connor, Birmingham, Alabama’s late segregationist police commissioner who ruthlessly used police attack dogs and fire hoses to thwart 1963 civil rights demonstrators, no fewer than three times.[SEE also Matt Balan's related post, with…

So Whoopi Goldberg is a fan of the "We Report, You Decide" school of TV journalism. Who knew? Unfortunately, her choice of "fair and balanced" news icons leaves much to be desired. On ABC's "The View" Oct. 19, Goldberg said,  "I don't get my news often times from any of the networks because, ya know, I'm from the Walter Cronkite generation, where they told you what was going on and you were…

Donny Deutsch said something on MSNBC's Morning Joe that was worth listening to.I'll give you a moment to scrape your jaw off the floor.Donny Deutsch, in addition to being a former CNBC host, is also a former advertising executive.  So when the following exchange takes place, you know he's actually speaking from some experience:JOE SCARBOROUGH: Donny Deutsch, when I was running for office, in…

Veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas, who has covered every president since Jack Kennedy, advised the White House to abandon their attacks on Fox News today. She attributed the administration's visceral reaction to the cable outlet to a naive sense of invincibility generally held by new presidents (video embedded below the fold).Asked by Joe Scarborough of MSNBC's 'Morning Joe' what "we…

ABC News's Web site includes the article "Is Obama 'Too Nice' to Make Tough Decisions?" by correspondent David Kerley.  The piece begins:With problems for the president in Afghanistan, health care and unemployment, some critics on both the left and right are asking: Is the president essentially "too nice" to make the important decisions?The National Journal magazine asks in a just-out edition, "…

After conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh was forced out of a consortium seeking to buy the National Football League's St. Louis Rams, there's evidence there is a double standard at play in the NFL. Last week, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said that people in "responsible positions" in his league are held to a "higher standard," reacting to the notion that Limbaugh could be a part-owner…

Give Mika Brzezinski credit for candor.  She has stated that during her 10 years at CBS, every reporter, producer and anchor she knew, with one exception, was a liberal.The Morning Joe co-host made the disclosure today in the course of discussing with Joe Scarborough the White House's attack on Fox News.Will Mika's revelation trigger a frantic internal investigation at CBS to root out the…

If it's Sunday, it's beat up on Fox News day. Earlier today, my NewsBusters colleague Noel Sheppard posted the disparaging words White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel had for the Fox News Channel, a sentiment that Obama Senior Advisor David Axelrod echoed on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos." Stephanopoulos pointed out comments made by Mao Tse Tung admirer and White House…

This won't surprise anyone who reads this blog regularly, but it needs to get on the record nonetheless: The airing of a June video showing interim White House Communications Director Anita Dunn praising Mao and Mother Teresa as "two of my favorite philosophers" to a group of high school students is barely news in the establishment press. In an August 2008 report on the Obama campaign, Anne E.…

Perhaps the 41st president still has it in him - at least when it comes to the left crying foul about the so-called uncivil political discourse on right, but being equally if not worse on the left - particularly on MSNBC, the "Place for Politics." In an interview on Oct. 16 with CBS Radio, former President George H.W. Bush took a very critical tact with MSNBC hosts Keith Olbermann and Rachel…

Just minutes after her colleague David Shuster offered a tepid non-apology for the network running a fake Rush Limbaugh quote, MSNBC's Tamron Hall took Meghan McCain to task for posting a saucy picture of herself on Twitter and also for issuing to followers a non-apology apology for those offended by her doing so.As my colleague Kyle Drennen noted earlier, at 3:40 p.m. EDT today, Shuster issued a…

Michael Wilbon, a sports writer and columnist for ‘The Washington Post,’ has written a really entertaining column today.Entertaining, in that it’s self-contradictory in the extreme.  This column is the literary equivalent of punching an inflatable Bobo the Clown.  And of course, it has to be about Rush Limbaugh.Wilbon can’t even make it out of the first paragraph without making a contradiction…