Online Media

As one would expect, there is plenty to criticize in Stephen Ohlemacher's Monday evening coverage of Donald Trump's achievement of an Electoral College majority earlier in the day. This post will concentrate on Ohlemacher's questionable counting of "protesters." A separate post looks at a very revealing failure in the wire service story's photo collection, in a graphic showing how the…

Tuesday, the press focused on whether Mevlut Mert Altintas, who assassinated Andrei Karlov, Russia's ambassador to Turkey on Monday in Ankara, acted alone or was, in the words of Russia's Vladimir Putin, "directed." There will almost certainly be similar speculation over the driver of the "truck that mowed down the crowd on Monday, killing at least 12 people" in Berlin, Germany, if and when he is…

News travels slowly into the Kansas City metropolitan area — or at least into the newsroom at the Kansas City Star. On Friday, the paper's Dave Helling produced a 950-word writeup on Monday's Electoral College voting. With all of the widely published news about Republican electors receiving death threats, all Helling had to report was a rumor: "One spouse of a Missouri elector claimed to know of…

On December 5, the New York Times published an op-ed column by Republican Texas Elector Christopher Suprun entitled "Why I Will Not Cast My Electoral Vote for Donald Trump." The Times celebrated Suprun's "courageous stand" in a December 6 editorial. In that op-ed, Suprun claimed that "Fifteen years ago, as a firefighter, I was part of the response to the Sept. 11 attacks against our nation." The…

On Thursday, Newsweek's Lucy Westcott forwarded possible excuses for Yasmin Seweid's fake account about anti-Muslim men attacking her on New York City's subway. Westcott spotlighted an activist who played up that young Muslim women, like Seweid, are "children of either immigrant parents or U.S.-born Muslims, and parents have high expectations of them, putting [them under] tremendous pressure."…

Thursday evening, Newsweek's Kurt Eichenwald appeared on Tucker Carlson's Fox News show. In a disgraceful performance which has to be seen to be believed, the obviously battle-prepped Eichenwald made an utter fool of himself. Apparently aware (or made aware) of how awful he was, he attempted to defend himself later Thursday in a 40-plus tweetstorm. It didn't help matters; the tweets were gone by…

The day after Election Day, Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner met with President Barack Obama. The primary takeaway from that interview, published in late November, was, as Tim Graham at NewsBusters noted, how Obama partly blamed Hillary Clinton's election loss to Donald Trump on “Fox News in every bar and restaurant in big chunks of the country.” Additionally, Wenner, in what seemed at the…

Only a few hours had passed after a South Carolina jury convicted racist mass murderer Dylann Roof on 33 federal charges Thursday, when radical leftist site Slate tried to tie President-Elect Donald Trump to the killer. “Indeed, when read together, Trump’s [presidential campaign] announcement and Roof’s manifesto offer a duet in racial grievance,” proclaimed their Chief Political Correspondent…

While the media are obsessed with debunking “fake news,” they might take a look at the plank in their own eye. On Tuesday, Politifact, the self-appointed purveyor of debunking “fake news,” has named the “phenomenon” of fake news their “Lie of the Year” and bashed Donald Trump for spreading these so-called false stories: “Fake news found a willing enabler in [President-elect Donald Trump], who at…

A Thursday op-ed on CNN.com outlined a proposal to "not only...end a Trump administration, but also to eradicate democracy's ugliest anachronism -- the Electoral College." Scott Piro hoped against hope that a group of Trump electors would switch their vote to Hillary Clinton, in order to gain "the bipartisan support needed to legislate it [the Electoral College] out of existence." Piro contended…

Slate’s Chief Political Correspondent, Jamelle Bouie, published a bitter diatribe against President-Elect Donald Trump on Wednesday, where he claimed, “Trump rode white populism to the White House,” while bashing his cabinet selections. “To run the government, he has picked men and women who disdain the missions of their assigned agencies, oppose public goods, or conflate their own interests with…

Get ready for more fake news - BuzzFeed is hiring! In the eyes of ultra-liberal website BuzzFeed, Islamophobia in America is a legitimate beat that needs covering, and they are ready to hire a journalist dedicated solely to making sure the plight of marginalized Muslims is reported. The site recently posted a job listing for “someone to join our ambitious national news team to cover Muslim life…

Though the press apparently wants everyone to forget about it, the fact is that barely two weeks ago, over Thanksgiving weekend, the Obama administration told the world, apparently only through the New York Times, its designated mouthpiece, that "we stand behind our (nation's) election results, which accurately reflect the will of the American people." The statement was "issued" to the Times on…

Sunday afternoon, Eric Shawn of Fox News interviewed former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton. By his reactions to what Bolton said near the interview's beginning, Shawn misunderstood the meaning of "false flag operation," apparently believing that every such effort has to be originated by the government leveling a charge of nefarious behavior against another, in this case the U.S. against…