Latest Blogs
Crashing the Tea Party: A Step-by-Step Media Guide on How to Discredit
Over the past year since its inception, the media have worked hard to discredit and denigrate the tea party movement. News organizations employed various strategies, from dismissing the protests as astroturf, to using derogatory nicknames for participants, and finally labeling it as a violent extremist fringe. In their futile attempt to get something to stick, the media have become increasingly…
April 20th, 2010 6:10 PM
Matthews: Republicans Like Rubio Taking Part in 'Stalinesque' Purge of
Chris Matthews -- who was offended by Rush Limbaugh calling the Obama administration the "regime"-- claimed the Republicans were engaged in a "Stalinesque" purge. On Tuesday's Hardball Matthews charged that conservatives challenging moderates within the Republican Party (like Marco Rubio versus Charlie Crist in Florida) was akin to Joseph Stalin's violent purges in the 1930s, as he teased an…
April 20th, 2010 6:00 PM
Politico Snarks: 'Most Transparent White House Ever' Prevents Reporter
While mainstream media reporters are generally pretty supportive of the Obama administration, they bristle, and rightly so, at incidents where the administration is less than transparent or actively seeks to impede journalists from working.Last week it was liberal Post columnist Dana Milbank snarking about how the nuclear summit was closed off to press scrutiny. Today it's Politico's Ben Smith,…
April 20th, 2010 5:35 PM
After Obsessing Over Enron's Political Friends, Media Mostly Ignore Mu
President Obama has extensive ties to Goldman Sachs. Yet even given record-breaking financial contributions and sketchy relationships between Goldman executives and Obama officials at the highest level, the mainstream media will not afford Obama the same scrutiny it gave to George W. Bush during the collapse of Enron.Obama's inflation-adjusted $1,007,370.85 in contributions from Goldman employees…
April 20th, 2010 5:02 PM
ABC's Ashleigh Banfield Frets Over War of Words Between Clinton and 'R
Good Morning America's Ashleigh Banfield on Sunday spun Bill Clinton's continuing attack on talk radio as a "war of words" between the ex-President and the "right-wing polemics [sic]." The former MSNBC host joined ABC in 2009 after a bitter departure from that cable network. [Audio available here.] On Sunday, Banfield provided no ideological description for Clinton. Yet, regarding Rush Limbaugh…
April 20th, 2010 4:28 PM
CNN's Brown Touts 'Rise in Right Wing Extremism;' Guest: SPLC 'Exagger
On her CNN program on Monday, Campbell Brown forwarded one of the Left's talking points about the tea parties by stating that "it does appear that we are seeing a rise in right wing extremism recently." However, her guest, historian Robert Churchill of the University of Hartford, downplayed her claim and claimed that groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center were "exaggerating" the threat.Brown…
April 20th, 2010 4:26 PM
Big Three Nets' Evening News Ratings Crater to Summer 2009 Levels Two
Two weeks ago (noted at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), the combined audience for the Big Three Networks' Evening News shows for the week of March 29 fell to just below 20 million. That audience was about 5% less than what Matt Drudge in the summer of 2006 headlined as "TV's Lowest Week." The Big Three's combined audience crawled back above 20 million during the week of April 5. But Chris Ariens of…
April 20th, 2010 3:27 PM
NYT's Frank Rich Repelled By Criticism of His Sliming of Tea Partiers
One clue that health care is not being well received among the public: Liberal media members, instead of celebrating the wonderful era of health-care access to come, can't stop obsessing over unsubstantiated allegations of racism among Tea Party activists, as if trying to change the subject.New York Times columnist Frank Rich's super-sized entry on Sunday, “Welcome to Confederate History Month,”…
April 20th, 2010 3:14 PM
NBC: Screw Your Neighbors -- Walking Away from Your Mortgage is 'Ethic
Surprise: NBC finally found a business it likes - even a business decision it likes: companies that help homeowners who decide to walk away from their mortgages. "New figures show foreclosures in the U.S. are up about 35-percent from a year ago," Matt Lauer kicked off an April 20 segment of "Today" that encouraged homeowners - even those financially comfortable - to simply walk away. "And a…
April 20th, 2010 2:45 PM
Newsweek's Kliff Laments 'Lack of Passion' Among Millennial Generation
"How can the next generation defend abortion rights when they don't think abortion rights need defending?"That's the question posed by the subheader to Sarah Kliff's article for the April 26 dead-tree edition of Newsweek entitled, "Remember Roe!" You may recall Kliff as the Newsweek staffer who complained that the House of Representatives has an "anti-abortion rights majority." In her April 26…
April 20th, 2010 1:06 PM
Study: Online Media Don't Polarize Like Critics Claim
Update - 12:48 PM | Lachlan Markay: David Brooks weighs in. See his thoughts below.One of the gripes about online journalism often aired by the Helen Thomases and the Chuck Todds of the world is that online news consumers will only consume news that reinforces their worldview or political beliefs. A new scholarly study challenges that assumption.The study, conducted by Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse…
April 20th, 2010 12:17 PM
Bloomberg Editor Al Hunt Attacks Tea Partiers: 'That's Not America
Bloomberg Washington Editor Al Hunt appeared on the web-only section of Sunday's This Week and dismissed the idea that the Tea Party movement has broad appeal. He derided, "They love Glenn Beck and they're skeptical of John McCain. That's not America." Hunt's comments pivoted off of remarks from the conservative George Will, who pointed to a new Rasmussen poll showing Americans more in line with…
April 20th, 2010 11:45 AM
Bachmann Warns Media, Democrats 'Singing off Same Hymnal' to Achieve F
It's pretty obvious that oftentimes the media and the Democratic Party work in concert to marginalize opposition of a common goal. ABC's George Stephanopoulos working with White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was just one example. The question is, how far will the media and Democrats take it? According to Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., if the passage of ObamaCare is evidence, they're…
April 20th, 2010 11:19 AM