Online Media

Today Democratic presumptive nominee Barack Obama issued a statement that he will forego the public financing system for the general election. His announcement goes back on a pledge to use public financing if the Republican candidate would do the same.All three broadcast networks' Web sites have the story, but only ABCNews.com noted in its front page tease that Obama is going back on a previous…

Call it an obvious "InCNNsistency." Subtle bias towards emphasizing unfavorable economic news and against reporting good economic news is present in many places. I will demonstrate that it's even sometimes in the brief e-mail alerts many people receive. This alert I received today from CNNMoney demonstrates a long-known (by me) but, until now, unproven point: But when the Dow closed above 14,…

Chicago Sun-Times Washington Bureau Chief Lynn Sweet spent an hour of her life today that she'll never get back: live-blogging Michelle Obama's appearance on "The View." You may recall Sweet from a previous NB post noting her story on how "Obama's Ayers connection never bothered anyone" in Chicago, or from this one where I credited her with noting a 2007 Obama gaffe involving the number of…

Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani is the latest Marine to turn out not to be a "cold-blooded killer" that the media and Democratic politicians painted Marines charged with the Haditha "massacre" to be. This two weeks after another Marine was acquitted in a Haditha court martial. FoxNews.com has the AP story about the dismissal of charges against him here.:CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. - A military judge…

ABCNews.com, reporting on the Catholic Diocese of Rome refusing permission to Ron Howard’s plans to film the movie prequel to Dan Brown’s "The DaVinci Code" in two historic churches, used loaded wording in the headline: "Church Cracks Down on New ‘Da Vinci’ Film."The lead for the report, written by Phoebe Natanson and Luchina Fisher, also used similar imagery to describe the Catholic Church’s…

Time magazine writer Michael Lindenberger's dispatch "From Gay Marriage's Ground Zero," read more like puffy campaign literature for the liberal Democratic mayor of San Francisco than an objective news piece.Here's how Lindenberger opened his paean to the thoroughly heterosexual Gavin Newsom.:Same-sex couples began marrying late Monday night in courthouse ceremonies across California, putting…

I noticed this photo accompanying an unrelated and relatively straightforward AP story at MSNBC.com about Barack Obama's electoral strategy. As you can see, it falls into the Obama-as-messiah mold, albeit a little more subliminal and requiring more biblical literacy than previous still shots:  Photo by Alex Brandon/AP. Caption: "Sen. Barack Obama walks to the pulpit to speak at the Apostolic…

It was all just an "error" that's since been "fine-tuned." So says Barnes & Noble [B&N] now about the way its search engine was prominently returning Barack Obama's "Audacity of Hope" in response to search requests for "God: A Biography." We wrote about the matter here last Thursday.Today, reader Dan H. wrote to tell us about an interesting exchange of emails he had with B&N…

GOP Presidential Nominee John McCain has proposed a series of ten townhall-style debates between himself and Barack Obama from now and August. According to the Earth Times, this is "widely seen as an effort to counter Democrat Obama's likely advantage in raising campaign funds."The article goes on to note that Obama has countered with "an offer of two townhall meetings between now and November to…

.... for its item on John McCain's age, it picked this one from the Associated Press: Alan Silverleib's article also contradicted itself within the space of just a few sentences:

It seems not everyone in the liberal blogosphere is smitten with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann.Take for example Huffington Post editor Rachel Sklar who on Thursday called out the insufferably arrogant and pompous "Countdown" host for naming CBS's Katie Couric his "Worst Person in the World" previously reported by NewsBuster Brad Wilmouth:Olbermann accused Couric of taking out of "context" comments by…

Here's an interesting little experiment from Vanity Fair: A guide to the blogosphere that isn't broken down by left and right but by news/opinion and high/low-brow.Click image above to view it. You'll find NewsBusters around the middle of the right side. The descriptions skew leftward as you might expect from VF, but the chart itself is pretty accurate. Your thoughts?Hat tip: Matt Lewis.

Picking up on the media's meme that a vast right-wing hate machine is going at full-tilt against Michelle Obama, ABCNews.com wants readers to know that the Illinois senator's wife is "more Jackie O Than Teresa [Heinz Kerry]."The story made the "top headlines" lineup for the afternoon of June 13, along with a headline tease for recent video from Fox News Channel where an onscreen graphic labeled…