Political Groups

Poll cooking season is officially in full swing. The headline today at the Washington Post reads: "Among likely voters, Obama-Romney close." Dan Balz and Jon Cohen report that in a September 7-9 poll, "the (presidential) race remains close among likely voters, with Obama at 49 percent and Romney at 48 percent, virtually unchanged from a poll taken just before the conventions." Ah, but Obama…

A NewsBusters tipster found a perfect example of why those who monitor journalists' original news coverage should look at all iterations of stories they file. Doing so reveals whether coverage of a story improves or degrades over time. It also occasionally exposes biases reporters otherwise try to cover up. The Associated Press's Ben Feller, tasked with writing a story immediately following…

Less than 48 hours from now, Chicago's teachers, whose union head insists, as quoted by the Associated Press, that "we are here to negotiate for better schools in Chicago," may walk off the job, leaving the children entrusted to them to languish in half-days of activities unrelated to learning "staffed by non-union and central office workers." There seems to be an unwritten rule that news…

The Daily Caller published two troubling stories by Matthew Boyle yesterday. The first, referring to email evidence, contends that senior Obama reelection campaign adviser David Axelrod has attempted "to subtly intimidate the respected polling firm when its numbers were unfavorable to the president," and that in August, "After Gallup declined to change its polling methodology, Obama’s…

If Clint Eastwood's "empty chair" speech last week at the Republican National Convention was so weak, pathetic, pitiful, ineffective, and worthless, why is far-left Hollywood not just leaving him alone? Instead, some are so upset that they're starting to take aim at the Academy Award winner's next movie and apparently rooting for it to be a flop (while using the passive-aggressive "will it hurt…

In a rare moment of reluctant semi-journalism which didn't name names, the Politico's Reid Epstein, in reporting about the God-Jerusalem debacle at the Democratic Convention Wednesday night, buried the lede, waiting until his third paragraph to tell readers (belated HT to Weasel Zippers) that "While the campaign at first said Obama had seen the language prior to the convention, it later said he…

Methinks the MSMer doth protest too much. If Mark Halperin weren't keenly aware that he was about to try to whitewash a huge vulnerability for the Democrats, why would he have prefaced his remark with the disclaimer that he and others weren't showing liberal bias by claiming it was no big deal? But that's exactly what Halperin did this on today's Morning Joe.  The show rolled video of the…

  Well, it looks like we have a bit of evidence that, contrary to an assertion by a pair of Politico reporters, it's not the media elites who can "powerfully shape" the narrative coming out of party conventions (the issue in question there was how Mitt Romney's nomination acceptance speech would be spun). After all, as Scott Whitlock at NewsBusters noted earlier today, the three major…

Last week I noted how the NBCNews.com website considered speeches by Gov. Susana Martinez (R-N.M.), Obama co-chair-turned-Republican Artur Davis, and Staples founder Tom Stemberg to not be "notable" enough for inclusion in their "curated" follow-up posts the day after their respective speeches. Well, today, NBC Politics has a post with "highlights from Tuesday night's Democratic National…

Last week, MSNBC steadfastly refused to dip into a speech by newly-minted Republican and former Rep. Artur Davis (Ala.), who just four years ago was not only a Democrat but an Obama campaign co-chair. But on Tuesday night, MSNBC showed in full the speech of Maria Ciano, whom anchor Rachel Maddow tagged a "former Republican talking about her conversion to Democratic politics, particularly on…

Yesterday, it was John Burton, the chairman of the California Democratic Party, who "compared Republican tactics during the presidential campaign to the 'big lie' strategy most famously employed by Nazi propagandists." According to the Associated Press, Burton, "'humbly apologized' to anyone offended by his comparison" (that's not an apology, as he didn't admit to doing anything wrong, but it's…

Completing a two-month full reversal of a tiny decline which began earlier in the year, the USDA reported on Friday that participation in the Food Stamp program, which the government wants everyone to call SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), reached an all-time record high in June. The program's had 46.67 million participants that month, eclipsing the previous record of 46.51…

I really can't do much with this one beyond relaying the absurd particulars involved in PolitiFact's incredible conclusion that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker made a statement which was only "Half True" about unemployment in the various states in his speech last week at the Republican National Convention. On August 17, the government's Bureau of Labor Statistics opened its monthly Regional…

The Politico, in its report on what turned out to be the center-right's "Empty Chair Day," covered the reaction of one prominent member of organized labor to Clint Eastwood's supposedly horrible (if you believe leftist pundits) speech at the Republican National Convention. If it was really that awful, they would be taking pity on Clint. Instead, they're getting hostile, meaning that the…