Specific examples of biased news coverage

As if the obvious needs to be laid out even more clearly, this page presents several more examples of what I've been discussing on the other Media Bias pages.

The news media sometimes show bias when they don't report current events.  Another nearby page on this site has a long list of examples of suppressed news topics.

There are also examples of media bias on the Hurricane Katrina page.


Associated Prevaricators:  A recent Associated Press story so thoroughly twisted the English language to present the opposite of reality, Bill Clinton might be writing its headlines. … This is not reporting:  it is news manipulation designed to massage public opinion about the war.  It is an important reminder of the ever-present filter through which Americans receive their news.

Magazine Madness:  Al Gore is a victim of media bias and advocates of low taxes are "crackpots."  These are two of the counterfactual theses advanced in major magazines this week.

The Media, Ahab Levin and Moby Bush.  We've seen a lot in this campaign cycle, but the media hit a new low with the ABC Sunday love-fest between Hillary Clinton and George Stephanopoulous.  For an entire hour, we were treated to an infomercial for the Clinton campaign.  It's a perfect example of how the political activists who pose as journalists have seized control of the media battlefield.  ABC News is now Hillary Clinton's most committed superdelegate. … Still loyal to Hillary, ABC chose to stage a one-candidate debate Sunday morning hosted by a former Clinton White House staffer.

Journalist Sympathizes With Illegal Immigrants.  A reporter for the Los Angeles Times, Nazario started her career at the Wall Street Journal two decades ago.  Her book, Enrique's Journey, recounts the perils faced by a young Honduran boy traveling north on the "train of death" to reunite with his illegal immigrant mother in the United States. … During her Commencement speech at Messiah College, Nazario carefully omitted any mention of these persons' legal status, referring to them instead "immigrants," "migrants," or, simply, women and children seeking a better life in the United States.

Jeremiah Wright's Controversial AIDS Charge.  [Jeremiah] Wright isn't the first public figure to repeat the claim that AIDS is a U.S. weapon to kill people.  The claim that AIDS was manufactured by the United States was reported by CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather on a March 30, 1987, broadcast.  Rather was widely criticized for playing into a Soviet KGB disinformation campaign.  The charge had appeared in a number of Soviet and Third World publications before Rather picked it up.

Williams Tosses Softballs to Obama, Empathizes Over Elitist Image.  Brian Williams, who slobbered over Barack Obama in their last interview in early January, did so again in a Thursday [5/8/2008] session excerpted on the NBC Nightly News.  Williams didn't pose a single challenging question nor mention Jeremiah Wright in any of the ten questions aired.

'I Hate to Keep Being in the Position of Defending Obama, But...'  Weeks before Linda Douglass announced she would be jumping aboard the Barack Obama presidential campaign as a senior strategist, the former CBS News and ABC News Washington correspondent was already aiding the Obama campaign.

Barack Clinton Obama.  [Scroll down slowly]  Reality is now shattering the myth.  Obama turns out to be a Chicago politician — highly ambitious, extremely talented, and neither untainted nor uncompromised.  Maybe it's time for the national media, many of whom (like Newsweek and MSNBC, for starters) are enraptured by Obama, to acquaint themselves with the real man.  Is that too much to ask when selecting our next president?

Newt Destroys Joy's Argument.  Appearing on the April 29 edition of "The View," former House Speaker Newt Gingrich proved his intellectual superiority to Joy Behar punching holes in her very shallow debate points.  Also, in discussing the ongoing Reverend Wright controversy, Whoopi Goldberg placed Billy Graham in league with Wright and Louis Farrakhan.

Liars' Round-Up:  The facts about your security are being torn to shreds by activist liars.  And they think that you're too stupid to know the difference.  Let's lay out the worst current examples of media make-believe and election-year truth-trashing.

Wright Speaks for the Left.  The Rev. Wright's decision to allow himself to be interviewed by Bill Moyers was, from his perspective, an excellent one.  It is difficult to imagine a less challenging, more fawning, interview.  How bad was it?  Given that one of the most egregious of the Rev. Wright's statements was his charge that the American government developed the AIDS virus and inflicted it on black Americans, one assumed that the first major reporter to interview Wright since the comments were made public would ask him about it.  Not Bill Moyers.

Who Needs Friends Like the Rev. Wright?  What is Jeremiah Wright doing?  That's easy.  He's helping himself.  Trying to save his reputation.  Smiling for the cameras.  What can Barack Obama do about it?  Not much.  The only thing worse than Wright speaking out is the respect with which he is treated when he does.  In numerous reports, Wright is being described as one of the leading African-American pastors in the country.

Salon Editor:  Most Press Members 'Hate Hillary Clinton'.  "I was struck when I got to Iowa and New Hampshire in January by how our media colleagues were just swooning over Barack Obama.  That is not too strong a word.  They were swooning.  I was at a speech, I remember it, I will write about it some day, in Manchester, and every, the biggest names in our business were there, and they were, they could repeat some of his speech lines to one another.  It was like a Bruce Springsteen concert where the fans sing along."

Blagojevich-Rezko:  Chicago Station Doesn't Name Party in TV Report.  The feds seem to be closing in on Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich — and at least one Chicago television station seems determined to minimize exposure not only of his party affiliation, but of others who have received tainted campaign contributions.

CNN Doesn't Mention Pro-Union Guest Was Union VP.  Author's former job explains her adoration of unions, but she is unopposed on 'Your $$$$$.'

CNN:  'Cheap' Corn Should Be Taxed to Fight Obesity.  Medical correspondent presents tax on products with corn syrup as a convoluted solution to obesity and to 'offset' price of corn, ignoring that the price is already at an 11-year high.

Bill Maher, Bigot.  Last week, a few days before Pope Benedict XVI's visit to America, TV talk show host Bill Maher went on a profanity-laden tirade against the Pope and the Catholic Church.  On his HBO Real Time program, Maher claimed that the Pope "used to be a Nazi," and called the Catholic Church a "child-abusing religious cult" and "the Bear Stearns of organized pedophilia."

Barnum & Bailey & CNN.  We're not talking about the candidates here, but about the shamelessly high-pressure pitch machine that has replaced the Cable News Network's once smart and reliable campaign coverage.  Was there ever a better backdrop than Las Vegas for the traveling wreck of a journalistic carnival that CNN's political journalism has become?

ABC and NBC, But Not CBS, Note Passing of Conservative Icon Hyde.  While ABC and NBC noted [Congressman Henry Hyde's] death, at age 83, on their Thursday evening [11/29/2007] newscasts, and even managed to avoid any pejorative ideological labeling, the CBS Evening News ignored Hyde.

ABC Gushed Over Edwards 30th Wedding Anniversary; Ignores Bush's.  ABC's Good Morning America, which aired two gushing profiles this summer on the 30th anniversary of John and Elizabeth Edwards, has found no time to air a similar story on the 30th anniversary of George and Laura Bush.

The McCain Mutiny:  "No other modern politician has received as much favorable press as John McCain has in the past decade," write (plainly irritated) David Brock and Paul Waldman in "Free Ride:  John McCain and the Media."  "The rules are simply different for McCain."  Boy, are they.  Though he flip-flops and prevaricates like any politician, McCain all but has the phrase "straight talker" tattooed on his skull-plate.  A lifetime Beltway insider and third-generation naval officer with an heiress wife and an heiress mother is still referred to, without irony, as a "Man of the People."

Media Try to Coronate McCain.  It is presumptuous, of course, for the Post or any other media outlet or personality to assume that McCain will be the nominee.  There is still a fierce battle going on.  In the February 9 Washington State caucuses, to take one example, McCain reportedly got 26 percent, Mike Huckabee got 24 percent, and Ron Paul received 21 percent.  The Huckabee campaign says that there were "obvious irregularities" in the counting of the votes and that Huckabee may still win if all of the votes are counted.  It is also still possible that the Republican convention could be deadlocked among the candidates.

But then, after McCain was sure to get the nomination...
 NBC's Ann Curry:  John McCain is Old, He's 71.  Did I Mention He's 71?  The "Today" show's Ann Curry interviewed Cindy McCain on Thursday morning [5/8/2008] and got her to promise that the McCain campaign won't go negative.  However Curry, herself, repeatedly pressed a point that is sure to be part of a, not-so-quiet, whisper campaign against the Arizona Senator this fall — that he's too old to be President.

Let's Get Journalists To Report The Truth About The 'Pregnant Man'.  Thomas Beatie has gained worldwide attention for allegedly being the first "pregnant man."  Mainstream media outlets are reporting Beatie's story as if were fact and referring to her as "he" instead of accurately reporting that Beatie is really a woman.  Thomas Beatie is actually Tracy Lagondino who lived in Hawaii with her lesbian girlfriend Nancy.  Lagondino and her girlfriend were lesbian activists who lobbied for "gay marriage" in that state.  They are now transgender activists working to redefine what it means to be married, to be male or female and to be parents.

NBC Nightly News Finally Calls Spitzer 'Democratic Governor'.  On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, substitute NBC Nightly News anchor Ann Curry and reporter Mike Taibbi failed to identify disgraced outgoing New York Governor Eliot Spitzer as a Democrat, but on Thursday night [3/13/2008] Curry finally informed NBC viewers of the party affiliation — a fact network journalists always consider relevant when a Republican gets caught in scandalous behavior.

Eliot's Mess:  [Scroll down] If you rely on the media, you may not even know it's a Democratic scandal.  They are once again practicing the infuriating art of dropping the party label out of their reporting.  As the story broke, ABC and NBC couldn't even mention the word "Democrat" in their Spitzer stories.  ABC put a "D" next to Spitzer's name on a screen graphic.  NBC couldn't even do that.

The First Affirmative Action Candidate.  To the adoring eyes of the liberal mass media, Obama is the closest expression of a rock star, if not a "black messiah."  While every white candidate is scrutinized and criticized, Obama remains "beyond criticism."  Had any white candidate, with less than three years experience in the national arena declared himself a candidate for the presidency, especially at the tender age of 46, he/she would have been ridiculed.  The media's collective white guilt with its derivative of "political correctness," does not seek articulation on policy or substance from Obama.

Less Tingling, More Reporting.  We have come a long way since Chris Matthews told us his leg was "tingling" when he listened to Barack Obama.  Well, sure, the liberal punditocracy is still playing defense for Obama … But more and more you see the MSM sharing tidbits of information that show him to be less than the Gandhi-like figure he originally was made out to be.

Guess He Liked It.  So much for "Hardball" — MSNBC host Chris Matthews calls Barack Obama's speech on race "worthy of Abraham Lincoln," "the best speech ever given on race," and "one of the great speeches in American history."

Obamaholics Unanimous.  Now that Barack Obama is closing in on the Democratic nomination, some are wondering whether the media will be tougher in their coverage.  There's a better question:  is it possible to be any softer?  The media writ large have been sounding like they're covering a messiah more than a man.  So was Hillary Clinton right to complain that Barack Obama has been more celebrated rather than vetted?

To the Washington Post, Bill Clinton is a Man of Character.  In a front-page article Friday, the Washington Post provided redundant reminders of why many people no longer trust the Mainstream Media to give them fair political coverage.  In bending over backwards to portray Bill Clinton in the best possible light, the Post story seems to prove that the media doesn't understand what constitutes good character.

Move On, Obama.  There's one little three-syllable word that has been left out of most of the Democratic primary coverage on the TV:  "liberal."  We're constantly told by anchors and reporters how the Republican contenders are fighting over the "conservative" vote and who's more "conservative," and that's true.  But exactly the same fight is taking place on the left side, with the Clintons trying to suggest Barack Obama's not sufficiently liberal….

Chelsea and the kid gloves.  I must be woefully misaligned with family values or linguistically tone deaf to be so deeply offended by MSNBC's suspension of Emmy award-winning Washington correspondent David Shuster.  His crime:  uttering a word no one liked. … If "pimped" is offensive enough to get a commentator suspended, where was the famous delay button?  And where — most importantly — is due process?  The union members who waved their signs behind Hillary Clinton might ask how she feels about an employee getting suspended, fired, demoted or down-sized for uttering one cheeky word.

Conservatives Laugh at Media Bias.  If Vice President Richard Cheney died, more people would live.  Bill Clinton sounds like Jesus in the Temple.  And the Republican Party caused the near-deathly stroke of Democratic U.S. Sen. Tim Johnson of South Dakota.  Each year, the Media Research Center issues awards for the worst examples of bias in a nation full of outrageously leftist media.  The awards, due out any day now, are a signal service to all who care about fairness in reporting.

Media myths about the Jena 6:  The outside media made sure everyone knew the basics.  There's just one problem:  The media got most of the basics wrong.  In fact, I have never before witnessed such a disgrace in professional journalism.  Myths replaced facts, and journalists abdicated their solemn duty to investigate every claim because they were seduced by a powerfully appealing but false narrative of racial injustice.

Academic Dirty Linen Revealed in California Law School Case.  Unsurprisingly, the way the controversy has been played in the press follows the usual left wing narrative of brave liberals threatened by troglodytes of the right, but beating back the forces of darkness.  McCarthyism redux.  And who can blame the libs from casting themselves as heroes?

Media Avoid Linking Democratic Party With NJ Scandals.  New Jersey = Corruption.  That is the conclusion when reading news stories about the latest round of criminal charges involving public officials in the Garden State, according to political scientists and media analysts.  However, the political scandals that continue to beset New Jersey have not translated into negative press coverage for the Democratic Party, which has been disproportionately affected by the corruption charges and arrests.

Bush's 'Wins May Cost Him' — News or Wishful Thinking?  The top headline in Saturday's ashington Post underlines the tendency for display bias by practicing future-tense journalism. … Why can't the newspapers simply report what has already happened, and not bog down the reader with their own biased impressions of what could or should happen next?  Why must reporters always get out a crystal ball and wear a silly fortune-teller's hat?

Media glow on Jane Fonda ignores her treason.  Here is one Vietnam veteran who is bothered far more by how the media portray her than by Fonda herself.  Now that the threat of communism is gone, the Cold War stand against it is sometimes ridiculed, likened to looking for boogeymen under the bed.  Fonda's own affinity for communism is brushed aside as paranoid rubbish.  But it shouldn't be.  Among those who protested the Vietnam War were many honorable, patriotic and faithful citizens.  Fonda was not one of them.

2007:  A Loony-Left Year.  Left-wing lunacy was pretty common in 2007.  Rosie O'Donnell talked her way off ABC's "The View" by spewing "655,000 Iraqi civilians are dead.  Who are the terrorists?"  Rosie had company on that set.  Her co-host Joy Behar seriously claimed that Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson's brain hemorrhage could be a Republican conspiracy:  "Is there such a thing as a man-made stroke? … I know what this party is capable of."

Hoist by Their Own Petard.  For the past 20 years, the Media Research Center has been compiling its list of notable quotables.  The quotes, from prominent members of the mainstream news media, provide a clear window into the leftist mindset that pervades most of America's large news organizations.

McCain spokesman John King of CNN:  I'm asking this question literally, not rhetorically:  if McCain's actual Press Secretary (rather than one of his many de facto ones in the press corps) had conducted this "interview," how would it have been any different?  Maybe they would have at least tried to pretend the questions were a little more probing, less adulating, just for the sake of appearances if not basic dignity.

Media Canonizes McCain While Slandering Romney.  The media manipulation inflicted on both sides during this primary season has been premeditated, dangerous, and outrageous.  That two of the most far-left "news" organizations in the country would get together to draft a prejudiced question designed to illicit a preordained response in time to use it against Romney just before the critical Florida primary, demonstrates that they not only have no shame, but could care less who objects to their calculated tactics.

Questions about Carville and CNN.  There are very few political analysts more closely associated with the Clintons than James Carville, who was a key adviser to Mr. Clinton in the 1992 campaign.  So it's no surprise that Mr. Carville's appearance on a round table after last night's CNN-sponsored Democratic debate is arousing some morning-after controversy.  "Would it kill CNN to disclose that James Carville is a partisan Clinton supporter when talking about the presidential race?" wrote Daily Kos.

Wolf Blitzer is No Tim Russert.  Judging by the reaction to Thursday night's CNN debate, everything seems to be falling into place for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign for president.  After flirting with subjecting her to some scrutiny, the media seem to be coming to the conclusion that her nomination as the Democratic presidential candidate is inevitable.

Ugly Clinton Rising.  If Hillary Clinton becomes president — get ready for everything we hated about our government to come springing back to life.  CNN's Wolf Blitzer's less than robustly honest form of debate engineering reminded us of the old idea that when it came to being bought and sold in favor of the Clinton's — CNN's brand was head and shoulders above the crowd.

A Clinton Friend's Role Sets Off Intense Criticism of CNN.  Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton prepared for a battle with her Democratic rivals at the CNN-sponsored debate on Thursday night [11/15/2007].  She did not have much to fear from the postdebate round table.  Among the experts trotted out by CNN to comment was James Carville, a Democratic strategist and CNN commentator who is also a close friend of Mrs. Clinton and a contributor to her campaign.

CBS Cooks the Books on Vet Suicide Numbers.  The headline is sensational:  "Suicide Epidemic Among Veterans" says CBS News. … But a deeper look at the numbers reveals something even more surprising; the suicide rate for vets is only slightly higher than it is for all males, both vet and nonvet, in the US.

Newsweek Scribe 'Deeply Uneasy' with 'Religious Believers'.  On Saturday's Religion page in The Washington Post [12/15/2007], they highlighted the typical secular liberal reporter in his natural habitat — tremendously skeptical of letting religious people play a role in public policy.

Shock:  Journalist Backs Mrs. Clinton!  The Boston Globe reports — are you sitting down? — that former ABC News anchor Carole Simpson, now a professor of journalism at Emerson College, endorsed Hillary Clinton for president: … "I anchored for 15 years, and I defy anyone to have determined my political feelings from that," she said.  Well, some people certainly tried….

Hsu's Your Daddy.  Any other candidate would be a victim of the 24-hour news cycle. But Senator Clinton gradually renounced the funds in a crafty fashion.  The first funds — Hsu's direct contributions — were renounced at around 6:30 PM on August 29, shortly after the evening news had begun.  Then, on September 10, Clinton announced the return of around $850,000 in bundled donations.  She did this on the day of the Petraeus report, the eve of 9-11 celebrations, and again, at 6:40 in the evening, virtually ensuring that the story got minimal press coverage.

Honoring Hillary For Media Manipulation.  There is absolutely no doubt that liberals really do think of the Clintons in rock-star terms, and the "objective" media have not merely treated them that way with a long-running assembly line of dazzled profiles and shoe-polishing interviews. … No one should deny that if our political press decided to drop the syrup bottle and press the Clintons on their scandals, or their politics of personal destruction, or their leftist policy prescriptions, they would look like a lot less impressive — and a lot less inevitable.

Agenda Journalism:  A Tale Of Two Papers.  Every now and then, one has the opportunity to read the original story from one newspaper and the edited version carried by another newspaper.  This can lead to responses ranging from amusement to outrage.  Such was the case with a story that originally appeared in The New York Times and which the Houston Chronicle extensively edited for its print edition.

Prescription For Bias:  Networks Downplay Drug Costs, Treat Medicine as an Entitlement.  The Business & Media Institute (BMI) has found a recurring network news bias against the pharmaceutical industry, treating drugs as an entitlement rather than an expensive-to-create product, refusing to credit and often ignoring entirely the companies that made the medicine. ... BMI looked at 132 stories on prescription or over-the-counter drugs from the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening newscasts between January 1 and Sept. 30, 2006. ... The broadcast networks mentioned costs to consumers or drug company revenues 11 times more often than they mentioned drug development costs.

ABC Fails to Wonder Why Canadian Mom Forced to U.S. to Give Birth.  On Wednesday's Good Morning America [8/22/2007], co-host Chris Cuomo completely glossed over the health care implications of a Canadian mother forced to give birth in the United States, not her own nation, to identical quadruplets.

The Liberal Suicide Pact.  It seems we weren't the only one to notice that the New York Times buried news of a foiled terror plot against John F. Kennedy International Airport on page 37. … Every time law-enforcement authorities announce that they have stopped a terror plan, we hear Daley-like pooh-poohing from the left:  The plot wasn't really that serious, it was nowhere near being carried out, the suspects were just a bunch of losers, that sort of thing.

NBC Promotes Bogus Russian Claim to North Pole.  On the NBC Nightly News on Monday night [8/13/2007], Brian Williams introduced a story about Russian claims to the North Pole that featured an image of what viewers were led to believe was a small Russian submarine under the polar ice.  The image originally appeared on the Russian television channel Rossiya.  But the image was not of a Russian sub under the Pole.  It shows a min-sub at the scene of the wreckage of the Titanic.

Time Magazine's Anti-Republican Bigotry.  Joe Klein of Time demonstrates why the media are more unpopular than the President they despise.  Klein has smeared secure-borders advocate Rep. Tom Tancredo, calling him anti-immigrant, while insinuating that the Republican Party as a whole is prejudiced.  This is as cold and calculating as the media practice of referring to illegal aliens as "undocumented workers."  It is deceptive rhetoric designed to manipulate news media consumers and confuse people about the real issues.

Chuck Schumer's Media:  Sen. Charles Schumer is a legendary pursuer of television cameras.  But look at the way the national media are covering Schumer's heavy-breathing pursuit to make Attorney General Alberto Gonzales cry uncle and resign.  It makes you wonder just how hard Schumer has to work to get press attention.  The media appear Schumer-owned and operated.  One interview really captures how the press acts more like a Democratic goon squad than nonpartisan observers of the national scene.

CNN's Double Time for Democrats:  CNN hosted three presidential debates last week, two for the Democrats and one for the Republicans.  Democratic candidates were awarded twice as much airtime in a three-day period.  CNN has its work cut out for it if it wants to be seen as impartial in the upcoming presidential election.

MSNBC Confirms Liberal Media Bias.  An unusual source -- MSNBC -- has provided the latest documentation of the liberal bias in the mainstream media.  It came in the form of a Bill Dedman article on its website looking at journalists who have given money in recent years to federal candidates, political parties, or political action committees.

NBC's Donation to Al Gore:  This coming Saturday, July 7, NBC Universal will devote a record 75 hours of coverage to Al Gore's "Live Earth:  The Concerts for a Climate in Crisis," to raise awareness about the alleged global warming "crisis" as defined by Gore.  The coverage will air on seven NBC Universal-owned programs, and Today news anchor Ann Curry will host coverage during NBC's primetime.

Al Gore And NBC:  Birds Of A Feather.  Was what Al Gore called "the largest global entertainment event in all of human history" also the largest in-kind political contribution?  And where's the Fairness Doctrine when you need it?

Planet of the Apes Redux:  Are Darwin and God mutually exclusive?  Like little boys called to the front of the class for public humiliation, Huckabee, Tancredo and Brownback immediately became targets of ridicule by the educated elite who, though Darwinists all, were presented with a contradiction:  If Darwin was right, how did these knuckle-draggers make it to the presidential campaign podium?

Poor Planned Parenthood?  As much as liberals decry major corporations that act as if they're above the law, there's always quiet when the subject is Planned Parenthood, America's No. 1 corporate provider of abortions. … This is one corporation the media hold in the highest regard. They're not "merchants of death." That would be the tobacco companies, or gun manufacturers, or hamburger joints. These are the heroic "providers" of "a woman's right to choose."

Undercover double standards.  Where are the muckraking champions when you need them?  Intrepid Lila Rose has learned the hard way:  Not all undercover journalists are equal.

John Edwards Charged $55,000 to Speak About Poverty, Media Mum.  If a Republican presidential candidate like Rudy Giuliani or John McCain charged a $55,000 fee to speak at a major university about poverty, would the media be all over it like white on rice?

A Mormon first?  For once, the media aren't so thrilled by a "first."  Usually being the first African-American, woman, Latino or anything else to run for a major office gives a campaign a frisson of excitement in the press.  Such pioneering campaigns are said to hold important lessons about the tolerance of the American public.  But former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney represents the first "first" that has elicited a lukewarm reaction from the media.

Scant Coverage of Brutal Crime Called 'Journalistic Malpractice'.  The national news media demonstrates a double standard in covering "hate crimes," as evidenced by the lack of attention given to the murder of a white couple in Tennessee last January, a conservative columnist charged on Monday.  However, a media analyst responded that a crime is not necessarily a hate crime simply because the victims are white and those accused of perpetrating it are black.

Falwell gone, evangelical movement alive and well.  The Rev. Jerry Falwell's passing seems to have traumatized the mainstream liberal press.  Absent in its coverage of the event is even the normal pretense of objectivity. … According to Time and others, the edge is disappearing and more evangelicals are buying into the so-called "progressive" agenda.  Now remember that "progressive" is today's code word for "liberal."  Suggesting that this increasingly defines today's evangelicals tells us more about the wishful hallucinations of left-wing journalists than reality.

Why Are They Lying About Ron Paul?  In a desperate attempt to make Rudy Giuliani out to be the hero of Tuesday night's debate, Fox News is continuing to attack Texas Congressman Ron Paul for something he did not say.  In the latest installment of this campaign, John Gibson of Fox News says that Paul "suggested that the U.S. actually had a hand in the [9/11] terrorist attacks."  No, what he said was that U.S. foreign policy was a reason why Osama bin Laden attacked America.  This is a fact.

Liberals demean blacks again.  The recent release of census figures divided by race, with the eye-catching datum that 100 million Americans now are racial "minorities", has revealed a host of assumptions on the part of liberal journalists. … But a new mental habit by the so-called progressives is emerging that is even more noteworthy:  the treatment of blacks as some sort of endangered species in various cities.

Hillary's Shill At CBS:  With Rather's retirement last year, CBS Evening News lost its big Clinton fan to sit in front of the cameras.  With former first lady Hillary now running for president, however, the network has decided to place one behind the cameras instead as executive producer. … CBS "Evening News" has become third in the network ratings since infotainer Katie Couric arrived as hostess.  For some reason, CBS thinks having a bosom buddy of the Clintons turn it into a nightly commercial for Hillary's presidential campaign is the solution.

ABC Gushes:  Clintons Are 'Masters at Turning Bad News Into Good'.  In early October, ABC reporter Kate Snow sprang to the defense of Senator Hillary Clinton's much maligned laugh.  On Thursday's Good Morning America [10/25/2007], the correspondent marveled over Bill Clinton's successes and also how his wife is able to make turning 60-years-old a good thing.  While an ABC graphic wondered if the Democratic power couple are "masters of spin," Snow gushed:  "The Clintons have always been masters at turning bad news into good."

Media Are Key to Hillary Victory.  Another Hillary Clinton connection to the phony media "watchdog" group Media Matters has surfaced.  Susie Tompkins Buell, a major fundraiser for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, put $300,000 into the group through her Susie Tompkins Buell Foundation.  Interestingly, while Tompkins Buell was swelling the bank account of Media Matters, which largely functions as a Hillary Clinton front group, her foundation was also putting $100,000 into The White House Project, an organization dedicated to promoting the election of a woman to the U.S. presidency. And we all know who that is.

Humanizing Hillary, Canonizing Chelsea.  Reporters are tripping over themselves to convince us how likable and human [Hillary Clinton] is — strong and yet nurturing.  It's the same playbook the media used for Al Gore and John Kerry, both just as stiff, robotic and unlikable then as Hillary is now.  So they're portraying Hillary not only as strong and invincible, but also as warm as a down comforter and as sweet as Mrs. Butterworth.

Bus story cries out for some perspective.  It seems a white guy was attacked by a group of black people on a bus in Wauwatosa two weeks ago.  The Wauwatosa police decided to seek charges including a hate-crime enhancer against one suspect because most of the people on the bus were African-American and someone reportedly used a racial slur.  Some folks have jumped on the Great Bus Hate Crime story as the latest example of rampant black-against-white hate crime in Milwaukee that goes largely unreported because of liberal media bias.

There's more to be said about Hate Crimes.

Superior Stem Cells Shunned By Media.  Each year there are stunning breakthroughs with adult stem cells, and 2007 has already brought its first.  Adult stem cells cure and treat more than 70 diseases and are involved in almost 1,300 human clinical trials.  Scientists also keep discovering that adult stem cells are capable of creating a wider variety of mature cells. ... This has caused great consternation on the part of those seeking increased taxpayer embryonic stem cell funds.  The reason is that there are currently no practical applications for this type of cell.

Culture of lying:  This saga is important for a number of reasons. ... It again exposed an unholy alliance between liberal politicians and the leftist big media who are quick to attack someone whose policies and party they don't like, but rarely correct errors of their own making, or investigate bogus charges when they help the policies and party the media prefer.

BBC pays £200,000 to 'cover up report on anti-Israel bias'.  The BBC has been accused of "shameful hypocrisy" over its decision to spend £200,000 blocking a freedom of information request about its reporting in the Middle East.

40th Anniversary of Liberty Attack.  This past June 8 marked the 40th anniversary of the attack on the USS Liberty by the air and naval forces of the state of Israel, resulting in the deaths of 34 American servicemen and a cover-up that has been maintained throughout the entire period. In remembrance of the day that — for many — will always be a day that will live in infamy, the Liberty Veterans Association (LVA) organized a reunion that included several ceremonies marking the event.

Why Roe vs. Wade is Losing Ground:  Did you notice the decrease in news coverage of this year's March for Life in Washington DC last week?  I tuned in to local and cable channels every day looking for news on the March for Life events I knew were being held in the nation's capitol for the 34th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade.  But I could find little coverage.  The same thing was true for print news.  Why?  Because of the mainstream media's liberal bias, many would say.  And I would agree with that.

NBC and the Cancer Vaccine that Isn't.  Even in the title of the story, "Cancer Vaccine Controversy," NBC gets it wrong.  Gardasil is a vaccine for HPV, not cancer, though HPV is one of the leading causes of cervical cancer.  But NBC used the words "cancer" and "cervical cancer" six times in just under two minutes.  Conversely the words "sexually transmitted virus" and "promiscuity" were only used one time each.

ABC World News Uses Scary Footage to Push Hate Crimes Bill.  Want to use a news story to influence a House vote on a hate crimes bill?  On the eve of the vote, lead with a close-up of skinheads presenting a Nazi salute.  Run some scary shots of the Ku Klux Klan.  It's a visceral, one-two punch.  You don't need to mention any legislation; you just need to paint a picture of out-of-control hate in need of a government solution.  That's just the manipulative trick that ABC News' World News with Charles Gibson played during its May 2 broadcast.

Media's Warning This Memorial Day:  Step Away from the Grill.  Journalists constantly attack the foods Americans eat and the companies that make them … Reporters hype food dangers, complaining about the obesity "epidemic" and bringing on "consumer" experts who try to scare viewers from eating just about everything.  They also rarely include any comments from the very companies or industries they attack.

CBS doesn't air special report on President Ford.  Unlike its network rivals, CBS News did not break into its programming for a special report on former President Ford's death, instead running a printed "crawl" at the bottom of the screen with the news.

Gerald Ford and Media Historians:  The passing of President Gerald Ford drew a dignified, even warm farewell from the national press.  There was near-consensus that he would be remembered for his decency and the risk he took, pardoning Richard Nixon from Watergate prosecutions in an effort to heal the nation.  It is proper that the press is kind today.  It ought to be remembered, however, that the press was not of this opinion when Ford took office.

Media erroneously label Ford as oaf-in-chief.  Republican leaders get pigeon-holed by Washington's liberal media establishment as either evil schemers (Nixon, Gingrich) or idiot bumblers (Reagan, Bush 43).  Gerald Ford got the idiot moniker, to the ever-grateful cartoonist community — but it was an unlikely label for the ex-college football star.

Bush's 'Omission' of Katrina Treated as Scandalous.  A night after CNN anchors fretted about how Katrina and the recovering Gulf region were "thunderously missing" from President Bush's State of the Union address, CBS and NBC picked up the cause.

Importing Socialists:  It's funny how the conclusion of an election can completely alter media reportage.  The day after the Democrat Public Relations Arm (DPRA) — euphemistically known as the "mainstream media" — got its party elected, they actually started broaching a couple of real issues.  Such as amnesty for illegal aliens. … Why wasn't the DPRA telling you about this before the election? … If you look at the groups that constitute 85 percent of legal immigrants and virtually all illegal ones — those of Third World ancestry — you'll see that they supported the DPRA's candidates by overwhelming margins.

'GMA' Discourages Enforcement of Immigration Laws.  The shortage of labor has some low-skill employers in a bind.  According to "Good Morning America" co-host Diane Sawyer, you can thank U.S. immigration officials for doing their job and cracking down on illegal border crossers.

The Media's Double Standard on Race.  In November 2005, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D.-N.Y.) had the audacity to hold a fundraiser for her Democratic colleague Sen. Robert Byrd — a former member of the Ku Klux Klan and a stalwart opponent of landmark civil rights legislation — at the home of civil rights pioneer Frederick Douglas.  Suffice it to say, had Clinton and Byrd had an "R" next to their names, it's likely that this act of very questionable judgment would not have been ignored by the mainstream media.

Media Gaga For ObamaRama.  In order to squeeze out every last possible drop of free publicity, Obama noted that his formal declaration of running will not come until Feb. 10, in Springfield, Ill., home of Abraham Lincoln.  Everyone plays up the impending rivalry between the two candidates everyone assumes as frontrunners — Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton.

CNN's Roberts:  Obama's $162,100 Senate salary 'modest'.  Only a network anchor could think that earning nearly four times the median household income is "modest."  That was CNN "American Morning" anchor John Roberts' take on Sen. Barack Obama's (D-Ill.) annual salary of $162,100.  He also called the Obama family incomes of "$470,000 up to $1.4 million" "pretty modest" during the May 17 report.  Roberts used the word "modest" three different times to depict some part of Obama's financial life.

CNN Disguises Left-Wing Activist as Everyday Mom.  On Thursday's American Morning [12/21/2006], CNN correspondent Dan Lothian reported on the controversy over a new Christian video game that, according to co-host Soledad O'Brien, "critics say" encourages "hate and religious intolerance."  Who are these critics?  Well, if you believe CNN, they are simply parents and concerned citizens.  In reality, the experts are actually committed left-wing activists.

Target-Rich Environment:  As we launch our Conservative Renaissance, we are blessed.  By the Democrats and their media masterminds.  By doing what comes naturally (and compulsively) they refuel our engines and goad our pit crews and drivers to greater speeds.  The 527 Media won't let the libs pretend to be moderates, and the environment created by their internal conflicts will be one in which the Conservative Coalition can regain itself.  We should thank them.  For starters, thank you, New York Times.

Dirty Trick from the New York Times.  In a last-minute dirty trick before the election, The New York Times took a story and twisted it in such a way as to damage the Bush Administration.  This will go down as a case study of media bias intended to sway votes.

Bergergate, &c.  Call me a right-wing paranoid — it's been done before! — but I think that, if Sandy Berger were a conservative Republican, the story of his criminality would be a really, really big deal.  Bear in mind that the man was national security adviser. … If Berger were a Republican, the word "Nixonian" would be making a big, big comeback — at a minimum.

The media's dark role:  Nov. 7 needs to be remembered for something even Republicans don't have the stomach to address at the moment:  that the remnants of objectivity in the mainstream media were all but exterminated by some on the left.  A chilling and ominous development that played some role in the Democratic wave that is still splashing around the red states.  Make no mistake.  Along with the multitude of Republican gaffes, and the hard work of the Democrats, there can be no doubt that the left-of-center mainstream media helped to manufacture this election victory for the Democratic Party.

Meredith Vieira Bemoans 'Same Old President Bush'.  The longer President Bush refuses to completely accept the Iraq Study Group's recommendations the more irked NBC's Tim Russert and Meredith Vieira seem to get.

Disgraceful Media Coverage of Sen. Tim Johnson's Medical Condition:  Ladies and Gentlemen, let's drop the partisanship for a second and recognize that the media coverage of Sen. Tim Johnson's (D-SD) sudden illness has been nothing but disgraceful.

ABC's Joy Behar Wonders If Sen. Johnson's Illness Is a Republican Conspiracy.  Well, it certainly didn't take long for a member of the media to suggest that there's some kind of conspiracy involved with Sen. Tim Johnson's (D-SD) medical condition.  On Thursday's "The View," co-host Joy Behar questioned, "Is there such a thing as a man made stroke?  In other words, did someone do this to him?"

Murtha Scandal Time Arrives.  The oohs and aahs began last November.  "All of Washington listened," announced CBS's Bob Schieffer, since "on military matters, no Democrat in Congress is more influential."  Murtha's words "followed President Bush halfway around the world," boasted NBC anchor Brian Williams.  CNN's Bill Schneider declared Murtha's withdrawal mantra as the "Political Play of the Week," suggesting it might turn out to be a tipping point just as delicious as Walter Cronkite's call to get out of a "stalemate" in Vietnam.

Schieffer Forwards Canard about McCain.  CBS's Bob Schieffer, on Sunday's Face the Nation, resurrected the media canard that John McCain's support of the Iraq war is what cost him the frontrunner status in the Republican presidential contest.

Time's insular take on Hillary:  Hillary Rodham Clinton is featured in a flattering black-and-white photo on the cover of Time magazine this week — the 10th cover story for Hillary Clinton since she appeared on the national scene hitched to Bill Clinton's wagon in 1992. … If you think the whole thing reads like an internal memo at a Democratic club, you're not mistaken.  In more than 4,000 words, there's not a single conservative or Republican detractor — not one — quoted.

Hillary may have to hide her brothers.  Mrs. Clinton's brothers may yet play a role in her pursuit of the presidency.  And she is indeed already in pursuit, if Time magazine's cover article this week is to be believed. … Time magazine wants to help.  This is the tenth Time cover she's been on.  Even Princess Diana didn't receive such royal treatment.

Jonah Goldberg's Column Is Curiously Redacted.  What this newspaper did to Goldberg's column in the editing process is a case study in how editorial people omit cogent information that might clash with their own political views.  Another reason, if one were to speculate on why the clever editing, is that liberal gatekeepers seek to protect their fellow liberals, and their megaphone, mainstream media, from bright, coherent conservative criticism.

Journalistic hysteria, Year 19.  Each year for the past 19, I've served as a judge for the Media Research Center's awards for the year's worst journalistic outbursts.  The winners will be announced later this month, and on my ballot MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and Newsweek's Eleanor Clift are two of the leading candidates.  Olbermann said on Sept. 11, at the site of the World Trade Center, "Who has left this hole in the ground?  We have not forgotten, Mr. President.  You have.  May this country forgive you."

The Truth, John Kerry, and The New York Times.  Now as then, the New York Times acts as if the issues involved were between Kerry's latest representations of his record and the "unsubstantiated" charges of the Swift Boat group.  The Times used the term "unsubstantiated" more than twenty times during its election coverage and continues to make no discernable effort to examine any of the charges in detail.

Under the Influence of Liberalism.  I find it interesting that, in today's maniacal media world, conservatives are taken to task for every syllable they utter, but liberals are given a pass.  A GOP gaffe will be replayed ad nauseam on news broadcasts, news magazine programs, and comedy shows.  Then, it may get a second round of play on liberal talk radio and ripped-from-the-headlines TV dramas.  But when a liberal makes a rhetorical blunder, he or she is excused because, after all, he or she really didn't mean to say it.  The guilty party is too erudite or too compassionate for the remark to be taken at face-value.

Democratic Win "A Good Thing".  The media pour on the bias during the last days of Campaign '06:  ABC's Sam Donaldson says he expects victorious Democrats to "delve into every nook and cranny of the Republican administration for the last six years. … It's a good thing," while Time's Joe Klein embarrassingly gushes over liberal Senator Barack Obama, writing that "Obama seemed the political equivalent of a rainbow — a sudden preternatural event inspiring awe and ecstasy."

Time Magazine Gets Caught Lying.  Would an editor who had never visited the scene of a photograph deliberately contradict the photographer's account of events?  Is it possible that someone would change a caption that ends up incorrectly describing what took place?  Moreover, would a prominent media outlet accept the claims of a terrorist organization over that of its own photographer?

Judge's order reveals FEMA aid shortcomings.  Those still receiving aid were most dependent before Katrina, mostly single mothers on welfare, while the rest are back on their feet, said Ronald D. Utt, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank. … "A lot of people have simply found it easier to stay where they are, which are probably places of greater opportunity than New Orleans."

The Editor says...
 The story above is loaded with political bias:  The question is whether FEMA is dishing out taxpayers' money fast enough, to people who have no intention of paying it back.  On one side of the argument, the article cites "anti-poverty advocates", and on the other side are "Bush administration defenders" at "a conservative think-tank".  As if the conservatives are in favor of poverty.

CBS Spins Good News into Bad to Influence Voters.  This is typical of how the liberal media operate, especially going into an election.  They take extremely good news — unemployment at a low national rate of 4.4% — and focus on one angle of the story that can be spun in a negative way, in this case, the conditions of minimum wage workers.

Washington Post Ignores Canadian Censorship In "War on Christians" Reporting.  Both Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank and religion reporter Alan Cooperman covered the "War on Christians" conference Tuesday [3/28/2006], but neither touched on one trend in Canada that American evangelicals are warning against:  "hate crime" laws that make speech condemning homosexuality illegal.

The barrier method works.  A Monday story by the Reuters news service should be required reading for anyone opposed to illegal immigration:  "Experts see U.S. border fence plan as impractical" is a stunning example of the intellectual dishonesty of Big Media and apologists for illegal aliens.  And surely the most stunning, how oblivious both seem to be about it.

New Study:  TV Networks Have Pounded Bush for Five Years.  For nearly all of his presidency, George W. Bush has been on the receiving end of mainly negative — sometimes highly negative — coverage from the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts, according to a new report from the Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA), a nonpartisan research group.

Bush Exposes Liberal Bias of NBC's Lauer.  On NBC's Today, co-host Matt Lauer pushed President Bush about Iraq with loaded questions and, as a result, allowed the President to expose Lauer's liberal bias as a journalist.

Anti-War Marcher Vieira Joins NBC's Today.  On Wednesday, Meredith Vieira will replace Katie Couric as co-host of NBC's Today show.  In 2004, Vieira declared that the "entire pretext for war" was "built on lies" and she marched in an anti-war protest.

Media Should Go After Criminals.  In my opinion, some of the best shows on television involve hunting down criminals.  "America's Most Wanted" on Fox led the way.  But [Howard] Kurtz, on his CNN "Reliable Sources" show, asked, "Should NBC be cooperating so closely with law enforcement?"  What followed was a discussion, not a debate, in which all three panelists … found fault with what NBC was doing.

$2 Trillion on Foreign Aid.  "After fifty years and more than $2 trillion in aid, the West has strikingly little to show for its efforts in alleviating poverty."  This was the blurb advertising an April 25 event at the American Enterprise Institute entitled, "Why Foreign Aid Has Failed-And How to Fix It."  However, the Los Angeles Times on April 13 ran an editorial accusing the U.S. of being stingy in dispersing foreign aid.  For the Times, $2 trillion still isn't enough.

Meredith Vieira, anchor/protester.  Meredith Vieira came on the air on August 30, 2004, the Monday of the Republican convention, and declared — no, boasted — she had marched in an anti-Bush, anti-war protest in New York, a protest designed to ruin any political benefit for the GOP.  NBC News is now hiring her to replace Katie Couric as co-host of "Today," and NBC's going to hand her an eight-figure salary each year to bring her leftist biases along with her, replacing Katie in more ways than one.

CNN Promotes Bush Assassination Flick — for Free.  CNN's American Morning devoted four minutes of air time, and free advertising, to a faux documentary that includes a digitally created assassination of George W. Bush.  The network, which has refused to air commercials for the controversial Death of a President movie, instead featured the film's director on the Friday edition of its morning show.

Falun Gong Protester:  CNN Censored Me.  The Falun Gong protester whose shrill outcries disrupted President Bush's White House reception for Communist China's leader Hu Jintao said Thursday [5/4/2006] that she was told not to discuss Beijing's gruesome practice of organ harvesting during a recent TV interview because it would disturb viewers during the dinner hour.

Hillary's political faith and the press.  Can someone please explain why Hillary and Bill Clinton always get a pass from the secular left when they invoke God in their public discourse?  Why is Dan Quayle ridiculed for championing family values while Hillary is glorified as a dutiful disciple of evangelist John Wesley? … Aren't we witnessing a glaring double standard here?  When the Clintons brandish the Bible, where is Maureen Dowd to warn of an impending theocracy?

Dictator's Anti-Americanism Neglected by Media, Study Says.  Higher oil prices generate more media attacks on oil companies and their executives, but the anti-American behavior and alleged human rights violations of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez receive much less critical coverage from network news, according to a free market group dedicated to challenging media misconceptions about free enterprise.

A Thieving Dictator Only U.S. Media Could Love.  Despite his threat to American business interests, Hugo Chavez is still the 'friendly' darling of the network news.

Pro-military mom silenced by mainstream media.  A grieving mother of a soldier killed in Iraq wants to voice her opinion.  She has a message about the war in Iraq and feels the American people need to hear what she has to say. … Her message is exactly opposite of the over-exposed message of the well-known protesting mom.

Character assassination, media-style.  Gasoline prices are rising, which means it's time for a new round of hysterical media stories about that dastardly oil industry, its obscene profits, and its nefarious ways.  Now the media are at it again, but with a different target.  They've turned their guns on Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens.

Black History Month — and the Black Heroes it Ignores.  Malcolm X didn't mince words.  "I'm not an American!" he sputtered, "America is a nightmare!  America practices slavery!  The white man is the common enemy!"  Naturally, Time Magazine heralded him during Black History Month.

Matt Lauer sets his audience up for ignorance.  The mainstream media positioned this story as a teacher who was disciplined, because, after listening to the president's State of the Union speech, he said Bush sounds a lot like Hitler.  Unfortunately, the mainstream media failed to report the fact that on February 1st, while addressing his high school geography class, Jay Bennish sounded a lot like Osama Bin Laden.

More about the Jay Bennish incident can be found here.

Will the Miracle Baby Change the Abortion Debate?  Is "Hurricane Amillia" about to blow the abortion village down?  Not if the media can help it. ... ABC World News Tonight was the only broadcast news outlet to make the connection between Amillia's gestational age and laws governing abortion.  The vast majority of the 21 broadcast stories that ran about Amillia last week merely dealt with the baby's homecoming.

CNN Analyst Won't Say "Partial Birth Abortion".  On the February 21 edition of CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, substitute host John King discussed the issue with legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin.  The term "partial birth" was referred to only twice in the segment by King, who made sure to note that it was a term used by "critics" of the procedure.

Media Myths and examples of bias in the coverage of the abortion issue.

Abortion Rates Drop, Bias Doesn't.  In reporting the good — nay GREAT — news that the number of abortions performed annually has continued to decline in America, The Washington Post couldn't refrain from infusing the Page One story with liberal bias.  Reporter Rob Stein put the statistics up front in the story (the abortion rate dropped 9 percent from 2000 to 2005, and hit the lowest absolute number since 1976), before mentioning that the numbers come from the Guttmacher Institute.  He failed to report that institute is a research arm of Planned Parenthood and an abortion rights advocate.

Wal-Mart:  Always Under Attack.  Always.  When journalists start referring to "the retailing behemoth," a "giant" or a business that "destroys other companies," it's time for another Wal-Mart story.

An imperial presidency?  You have to wonder where the likes of Jonathan Alter were when Bill Clinton openly flouted the rule of law.  Was he not seeking to become a law unto himself?  How about Hillary's penchant for secrecy and her frequent flights from accountability?  What about Bill's "unilateral" bombings of Iraq and Serbia?  No, it's not expansions of executive power that bother the left, but when they occur under a Republican presidency.

The tennis tempest at ABC:  The subject was the ethics of judicial travel.  As investigative reporter Brian Ross explained in the middle of the piece, "Justices at all ends of the political spectrum take plenty of these trips to lots of nice places, all paid for by somebody else."  But this was no expose on justices "at all ends of the political spectrum."  It was a shameless hit piece on conservatives, complete with hidden-camera cheap shots.

Probing ABC's Scalia probe:  There's no shortage of historic and gripping Supreme Court stories for journalists to report on these days.  Why, then, does ABC News' "Nightline" care where Associate Justice Antonin Scalia was the night Chief Justice John Roberts was sworn in?  It cares because it mistakenly thinks it has caught him in a "judicial junket."

MRC Study:  Evening News Shows Claim NSA Spies on "Americans," Not "Terrorists".  Over at www.mrc.org, we've just posted a new study of how ABC, CBS and NBC have covered the NSA surveillance story.  It's just as awful as you expected — most network stories were framed around the idea that the program is probably illegal and a shocking violation of Americans' civil liberties.

Sometimes in Polling, It's All in the Question.  What does the public think about the Bush administration's wiretapping program?  It depends on how you ask the question.  A half dozen polls on the issue have turned up different conclusions, and a key distinction appears to be the way pollsters identify the people who might have their emails and phone calls monitored as part of an effort to fight terrorism.  Recent poll questions have referred to "suspected terrorists," "people in the United States" and "American citizens."

More information about domestic spying can be found here.

"Today" show's Lauer calls Alito "ultra-conservative".  If Lauer calls Alito an "ultra-conservative," does he ever use the term "ultra-liberal"?  The liberal ADA — Americans For Democratic Action — scores members of Congress from 0 to 100, with 100 meaning most liberal. … Under the ADA rating, for example, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., receives an ADA rating of 100; Sen. Kennedy scores a 100; and Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisc., rates a 100.  Would Lauer refer to them as "ultra-liberals"?

Media Swallows Kennedys' Arrogant Presumption.  Are we done worshipping the Kennedys yet?  And what do you mean by "we"?  That was quite a spectacle — the commentariat gushing superlatives over the alleged power of Ted and Caroline to deliver liberals to Barack Obama.  Half the electorate wasn't even born when the sainted John F. Kennedy was assassinated — and few have any idea who Ethel is.  Though the Kennedy brand is in steep decline, the wave of conformist opinion still thinks this endorsement is very big.

The Editor says...
 Mary Jo Kopechne is unavailable for comment.  If Ted Kennedy was a man of integrity, he would have resigned from the Senate in 1969.

MRSA Outbreak Among 'Gays' — Let the Whitewash Begin.  You can't help but feel a little sorry for Amanda Beck.  She's a reporter from Reuters who was among the first to cover a new study conducted by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, which warns about an outbreak of a virulent, drug-resistant, and potentially deadly strain of Staph infection afflicting certain segments of the homosexual community. … Here's where Amanda went wrong.  She objectively provided scientific information to the public which cast "high risk" homosexual conduct in a negative light.

The Gay Propaganda Machine:  In a blatant violation of journalistic ethics, Time magazine assigned a homosexual reporter, John Cloud, to write the recent Time cover story on homosexual teenagers but did not disclose his conflict of interest to its readers.

Homosexuals in the military:  It seems virtually every story written or soundbite uttered involves supporting the ability of homosexual men and women to serve openly in the armed services, but remarkably few discuss the alternative point of view.  Such an important issue ought not be decided based on such an out-of-balance ratio.

New Anchor's Record of Liberal Advocacy:  Tomorrow, Ted Koppel signs off after 25 years as Nightline anchor. … But while the characters change, expect the spin to remain the same.

ABC promotes George Stephanopoulos.  ABC News has appointed "This Week" anchor George Stephanopoulos as its chief Washington correspondent, adding duties to his weekly job at the helm of the Sunday morning political talk show.  [Mr. Stephanopoulos was an adviser to President Clinton before joining ABC News.]

Old Media News In The Tank.  Chris Matthews was a speech writer for Jimmy Carter and, later, a top aide to Tip O'Neill.  Brian Williams dropped out of college to become an intern in the Carter administration.  George Stephanopoulos was Bill Clinton's communications director.  When they put together a "roundtable" it tends to resemble a groupthink séance.

TV Station Apologizes to Schwarzenegger.  A television station apologized to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger Friday [11/04/2005] after discovering that several Democratic activists were in its audience for a voter forum. … The Republican governor was peppered with questions with a partisan slant during Thursday's broadcast, and at one point a man in the audience tried to shout him down.

[Liberals are apparently unable to engage in a rational debate.  When they begin to lose an argument, they just start shouting.]

 They're Terrorists.  "I know it when I see it" was the famous response by a U.S. Supreme Court justice to the vexed problem of defining pornography.  Terrorism may be no less difficult to define, but the wanton killing of schoolchildren, of mourners at a funeral, or workers at their desks in skyscrapers surely fits the know-it-when-I-see-it definition.  The media, however, generally shies away from the word terrorist, preferring euphemisms.

CNN:  'Be nice to Fidel'.  So how does an American news giant tell its on air talent to handle Fidel Castro's resignation?  By glossing over the truth of the tyrant's reign and pimping "social progress" under his brutal regime:  In a memo to CNN anchors, CNN brass laid down the line that should be taken when talking about the resignation.

The U.S. Media's Decades of Cheering Castro's Communism:  Castro's communist regime has executed hundreds of political opponents and driven tens of thousands more into exile; hundreds of dissidents today languish in Cuban prisons. ... Yet liberals in the U.S. media — who have rightly condemned such abuses when perpetrated by dictators such as Chile's Augusto Pinochet — inexplicably remain enchanted with Castro and his socialist revolution.  For more than half a century, positive profiles of Castro have appeared in U.S. papers.

CBS Comes to Castro's Aid.  CBS's 60 Minutes has run a segment on Elian Gonzalez, five years after the Clinton administration sent him back to the communist prison island.  He had come to America as a refugee, without his father, who was back in Cuba and under pressure from the communist regime to demand him back.  The Clinton administration complied, seizing the little boy at the point of a gun.  It made a mockery of America's reputation as a free society open to refugees fleeing persecution.

Nets Obscure Earle's Partisan Affiliation; CBS Didn't With Starr.  The CBS Evening News, which described Ken Starr as the "Republican" independent counsel, on Wednesday night [9/28/2005] went out of its way to avoid alerting viewers to how Ronnie Earle, the Texas county prosecutor behind the indictment of Tom DeLay, is a Democrat.  Anchor Bob Schieffer twice described DeLay not by his title as House Majority Leader, but as the "House Republican Leader."

CNN Awards $100,000 To National Gay and Lesbian Journalists Association.  Pamela Strother, NLGJA Executive Director, said "This unprecedented gift from CNN is a milestone for NLGJA as the largest single gift from a news media company to the organization."

TV's trouble with religion:  For an industry that claims to reflect reality, the results are not good.  Religion is virtually ignored, and when covered, more often than not it's attacked.

USA Today Caught Altering Condi Photo.  USA Today has been caught altering a photograph of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in order to make her look more sinister. … This is another reminder that we must cast a skeptical eye to anything published about conservatives in the national media.

The Democrats' own history with race.  For decades, it has been a template of the major media that Republicans are the party of racism.  It repeats uncritically any charges of Republican racism, no matter how unfounded.  Democrats, on the other hand, are always given a pass whenever they commit racist offenses.  Even a cursory review, however, will show that the media template is totally contrary to history.

Pacifist Hatfield supports Iraq war.  Last week, former Oregon governor and senator Mark Hatfield, now 82, announced his strong support for the American effort in Iraq.

Firefighters Versus the Media.  One of the biggest stories of the presidential campaign is being ignored by the major media.  It's how the president of the firefighters union engineered an endorsement of John Kerry for president without asking his members about it.  It turns out most of the members of the union are Republicans who support Bush.

There go those "controversial Catholics" again.  You'd think Katie Couric would aspire to be an anchorwoman for all the American people now that CBS appears to be wooing her for the Throne of Rather.  So why did she have to be so rough on Thomas Monaghan, the founder of Domino's Pizza, for being a Catholic?

Wilson Discredited, Networks Silent.  All three of the broadcast networks treated Joe Wilson like a rock star when he was bashing the Bush administration and its case for war against Saddam Hussein.  But ABC, CBS and NBC haven't bothered to inform viewers that Friday's [7/9/2004] Senate Intelligence committee report showed how Wilson's own claims were false.

Tit for Tet:  Abu Ghraib is the new Tet offensive.  By lying about the Tet offensive during the Vietnam War, the media managed to persuade Americans we were losing the war, which demoralized the nation and caused us to lose the war.  And people say reporters are lazy.

The Lies of Tet:  Media misreporting of Tet passed into our collective memory.  That picture gave antiwar activism an unwarranted credibility that persists today in Congress, and in the media reaction to the war in Iraq.  The Tet experience provides a narrative model for those who wish to see all U.S. military successes — such as the Petraeus surge — minimized and glossed over.  In truth, the war in Vietnam was lost on the propaganda front, in great measure due to the press's pervasive misreporting of the clear U.S. victory at Tet as a defeat.

Media's Selective Outrage, by the Numbers:  To the casual observer, the situation in Iraq is bleak, the Iraqi people don't really want democracy, and the only worthwhile story is the brutality and intimidation of Iraqi prisoners.  To the "casual observer" of the mainstream media, that is.

Judging from Iraq, the United Nations is no solution.  Media pundits can't understand why all the negative news coming out of Iraq doesn't produce poll results that show Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., defeating President George W. Bush.  That's probably because Kerry's solution to the Iraq problem is to turn over its management to the United Nations.

The news media and Nick Berg:  For those who still doubt that ideology guides most of the world's major news media, the reporting of the Islamic ritual murder of Nick Berg provided textbook examples of an almost universally leftist bias.  News media have essentially become propaganda organs for anti-Americanism.

Beirut, Waco or Oklahoma City?  Tom Brokaw called the event "an evil act".  But Tom never even suggested that there were evil actions of government in Waco.

Painfully unaware:  Fetal-pain expert testifies on the "excruciating" partial-birth procedure as the government defends its ban against the industry's lawsuit.  But as the trial produces sensational testimony, the courtroom remains virtually journalist-free.

Criminalizing business:  part II.  A recent column in the San Francisco Chronicle vividly illustrates the anti-business mindset of many Californians.  It dealt with the fact that Wal-Mart lost a referendum to allow the retailer to put a store in Inglewood, California.  According to the Chronicle columnist, Wal-Mart was "trying to bully its way into another targeted community."  Putting an issue to a vote is called "bullying" when business does it, and the community where it wants to locate is called a "target."

USA Today's Deceptive Backgrounder.  The online resource distorts fundamental historical events essential to understanding the day-to-day news.

Could you repeat that, please?  After waiting months to question President Bush at a full-dress press conference, why did these reporters get up one after another and ask the same question?

Bait-and-switch media:  My first inkling of how fundamentally ill-informed some of even the big names on television are came back in 1981, when I was interviewed on "Meet the Press."  Back in those days, the interviews were done by a panel of reporters.  Their questions and comments revealed incredible ignorance.  The reporters in turn were incredulous when I said that Social Security was financially unsound.  Now, 23 years later, everybody knows that.

New York Times' Bush Smear Campaign:  On Saturday [4/10/2004], the New York Times — adhering to the P.T. Barnum school of journalism — screamed on its front page that President Bush was warned "that supporters of Osama bin Laden planned an attack within the United States with explosives and wanted to hijack airplanes."

Spain:  a media flip-flop.  Don't think that presidential candidates are the only political players who can be accused of flip-flops.  Take a look at how the media elite have spun the election in Spain.

Tenet Says No Improper Influence, CBS Ignores It.  CIA Director George Tenet specifically denied that the Bush administration improperly influenced intelligence on Iraq in a speech at Georgetown University.  CBS News ignored the comments but ABC, NBC and Fox News all reported them.

Move on?  Let's not.  The radical haters at MoveOn.Org have used their Internet space to show ads comparing President Bush to Adolf Hitler, and the media, so quick to condemn any negative ads produced by Republicans, are giving them a free ride.

The Playboy philosophy at 50:  For the past weeks, the media have been gaga over the 50th anniversary of Playboy magazine and the "Playboy philosophy," whose guru, Hugh Hefner, began to mainstream pornography and de-couple sex from a committed marital relationship.

The Truth and Mr. and Ms. Clinton:  Does the media treatment of former President Bill Clinton and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton suggest a bias?  Please, let us not engage in reckless, unfair, and cynical speculation.

First kids:  The mainstream media chooses to portray our country's First Children either negatively or positively, depending on the political party of their parents, the President and First Lady.

Something Fishy at AFP:  An AFP photographer uses a wide-angle lens to exaggerate his picture, and the AFP caption omits essential context.

CNN planted question at debate, student says.  While covering a debate of Democratic presidential candidates, CNN planted a question in order to make the debate appear more "lighthearted."

Sponsor Pulls Ad from CBS News After Homeschoolers' Complaints.  At least one sponsor temporarily withdrew advertising from the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather, after advocates of homeschooling complained about last week's two-part report on the "dark side" of the "largely unregulated" home school movement.

Media reporting from Iraq is one-sided and flawed.  If you rely on newspapers and TV networks for your news, chances are you have no idea that the controversial performance of Western reporters in Iraq is emerging as a big issue.  The mainstream media have virtually ignored the stunning charges made by John Burns, the New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter.

True Grit:  A man named Greg Packer "...is apparently the entire media's designated "man on the street" for all articles ever written.  He has appeared in news stories more than 100 times as a random member of the public."

Greg Packer Is the 'Man on the Street'.  While Packer says "honesty is very important to me," he does admit that about 5% of the time, "I'm making stuff up to get in the paper."  A Boston newspaper, for example, quoted him as saying he had a ticket for the 1999 baseball All-Star Game there when he really didn't.  "At times the media can be gullible, but they have to take people at their word," he explains.

Related article:
The Times' Designated Man in the Street:  When the New York Times needs to find a man in the street to interview they never have to look very far - they have one on tap suitable for every occasion.

Katie Couric:  "Hopefully" Saddam Made It to Syria:  Is perky "Today" show host Katie Couric actually rooting for Saddam Hussein to survive the U.S. military's repeated attempts to take him out?

CNN Exec Admits Covering Up "Maniac" Saddam's Atrocities:  Here's another fascinating item we'll dedicate to Jacques Chirac, Nancy Pelosi and the other humiliated appeasement activists:  A CNN big is admitting his network covered up the atrocities of Saddam Hussein.

A Double Standard at CNN:  The double standard at CNN is: when those on the right do something it is fishy and needs an expose.  When the same thing is done on the left, it is just "the given."

The Castro News Network:  To many Cuban Americans, CNN is the "Castro News Network" - an organization that lends legitimacy to a corrupt regime and sneers at the exile community in Miami.

Fidel Castro's Dupes:  In Castro's Cuba, it is a crime to meet to discuss the economy, to write letters to the government, to report on political developments, to speak to international reporters, to advocate human rights, to visit friends or relatives outside your local area of residence without government permission.

Castro's Cult of Sycophants:  Celebrities, journalists, and other illuminati have long gushed with admiration for Cuba's communist despot.

Media Mangle:  Sometimes the mainstream media gets it so wrong we have to call them on it.  (Numerous articles)

Pro-Marxist Slant Pushed at ABC, Retired Correspondent Claims.  Having kept quiet for 14 years, a former ABC News correspondent has gone public for the first time with allegations that network anchorman Peter Jennings manipulated news scripts during the 1980s in order to praise the Marxist-backed Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

Let the Recriminations Begin!  If the past is any indication, no one on the left is likely to own up to being so horrendously wrong about Operation Iraqi Freedom.  That's why it's up those of us who have supported the war all along to point it out for them.

Where Helen Thomas's heart lies:  Shame, shame, shame on Helen Thomas.  The crusty ex-journalist turned White House heckler had only one thing on her mind when her favorite news stations, al Jazeera and Iraqi state TV, repeatedly broadcast those chilling pictures of scared American POWs and gleeful Iraqi soldiers hovering over dead American soldiers….

Major Media Ignores Polls, Rallies Showing Support for War Effort.  Patriotic citizens in the tens of thousands have already attended rallies to support the troops, but the liberal media has demonstrated a preference for ignoring them and instead portraying sparsely attended anti-war rallies as the sentiment of most Americans.

The Viet Cong Admiration Society retreats.  As American servicemen swept through Iraq, securing oil fields, rescuing POWs, risking their own lives to protect Iraqi civilians, Peter Arnett went on Iraqi television — the propaganda arm of the enemy — to proclaim that the Americans' "war plan has failed."

Administration adults vs. media snipers:  Sorry, but I'm compelled to talk about the media war critics again. I won't quit fairly criticizing them until they quit unfairly and dishonestly criticizing the American war effort.

Time Retracts Anti-Bush Racial Smear:  Sorry, Democrats, but your entire platform of racial demagoguery is blowing up in your faces by alienating voters.

How the Liberal Media Are Preparing For the Tax Wars:  Despite commentators who have spent the days since November's elections accusing the media of being too conservative (really), there has been no let-up in the establishment media's prevailing liberal bias, especially when it comes to the issue of high taxes.  Liberals believe government is an engine for positive social change, so it's always better for bureaucratic do-gooders to have as much money as possible.

Winona and the Wichita massacre:  The press seem to be more interested in a rich shoplifter than the mass murders.

The Biased Sniper Aftermath:  The suspects – caught with the smoking rifle – were John Muhammad, a 41-year-old black man with affections for the Nation of Islam (not to mention al-Qaeda) and John Lee Malvo, a 17-year-old black male Jamaican in the U.S. illegally.  In both print and broadcast, the national media avoided the controversial labels of "Farrakhan fan" and "illegal alien."  They were an "Army veteran" and "a teenager," the Gulf War sharpshooter and his Jamaican ward.  Most ridiculously, the Miami Herald cast Mr. Muhammad as "an 'all-American' veteran of the Gulf War."

The Rush From Judgment:  Like many people, it crossed my mind early in the Beltway Sniper case that this might be a terrorist attack.  I reserved judgment, realizing — unlike the armchair experts who flocked to fill airtime on cable news channels -- that I did not know all of the facts available to the police.  But the moment I heard the suspect's name, John Muhammad, the conclusion was obvious.  These killings were motivated by a version of the same Islamic ideology that has inspired mass murder around the globe.

Fidel, The Dictator-Celebrity:  Journalism is never more amoral than when dictators are the mandatory "get" for a news puff piece.  For the 40th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the network anchors were all scrambling to get an interview with Fidel Castro, the dictator-celebrity.  Which network superstar would get the first opportunity to reward the communists for their exclusive by lauding the achievements of the glorious revolution?

Analysis: Phil Donahue Owes an Apology.  As the mysterious sniper was rampaging, Donahue went on his MSNBC program with a look of smugness and glee to say, and I'm paraphrasing, "You're not going to like to hear this, but this is a white guy." (As it turned out, the suspects are black.) Donahue's irresponsible mutterings are racial stereotyping, and that is wrong.

Leftist Media Try to Blame Military for Sniper Suspect:  It figures: The left-wing media establishment is downplaying and even ignoring sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad's pro-terrorist sympathies and ties to radical Islam, the anti-American left and Louis Farrakhan — and is trying to blame the U.S. military.

The Media's Messed Up Priorities in News Coverage:  On August 12, more than 700 mourners from across the country gathered to mark the tragic murder of Kris Eggle -- a 28-year-old National Park Service ranger who was gunned down near the U.S.-Mexico border last week.  Not a single national network or cable news station mentioned the memorial service or the outrageous circumstances of Eggle's death.

A person of interest:  The American media functions primarily as a pimp for government.  The liberal media will blast conservative Republicans but never the government.  …Consequently, every prosecutor with a high-profile case relies on the media to pressure the target into a plea bargain.

Larry Klayman:  Bias Exhibit A:  Life if full of surprises.  Here's one.  Who ever imagined that Larry Klayman would be the darling of National Public Radio?

Correction of Errors:  It would take a revolution at the New York Times, the Washington Post and the TV networks to get them to tell their readers and viewers that they had deceived them about the dangers of DDT, global warming, nuclear power and the ozone hole.


Special subsection about Vice-President Cheney's hunting accident:

This incident showed the country a great deal about news media priorities, sensationalism and unmitigated political bias.

The people in the Washington news media are not accustomed to being ignored.  They can't stand being left in the dark, even for a few hours, when something happens that falls into the scope of their supposed "right to know".  They also don't understand how responsible adults can spend the day using shotguns to kill birds as a means of social interaction.  That's why this story raised such a furor in the media, and why the media insists on passing the furor on to you.

Why weren't we informed?  Isn't it obvious?  One particularly eager journalist asked, "Under Texas law, is this kind of accidental shooting a possible criminal offense?"  The transcript does not indicate whether he was rubbing his hands together at the time.

Why did Cheney go to the Fox network?  This incident became a perfect storm for all that the mainstream media dislikes about the Bush administration — tax cuts, the war, his alleged secrecy, tax cuts, Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, the Katrina response, tax cuts, Justices Alito and Roberts, his home state of Texas (where they have the death penalty), tax cuts, his walk, his pronunciation of the word "nuclear," and tax cuts.

Cast of Characters:  Part IV.  Remember how the media carried on for weeks about Vice President Cheney's hunting accident?  How a Time magazine reporter had a temper tantrum at a White House press briefing because the news wasn't released soon enough — as if this hunting accident had any significance for the nation, beyond those in the media who were frustrated at being deprived of a Sunday talk show feeding frenzy?

Old media shame:  I see the vice president as an honorable, forthright gentleman who places the nation's best interests above his own.  Others prefer to believe he would sell out his own mother to line his pockets with oil-slicked greenbacks.  The Old Media, of course, fall into the latter category.

Spoiled brat media:  The accidental shooting of Harry Whittington, while he was on a hunting trip with Dick Cheney, has nothing to do with government policy or the Vice President's official duties but the mainstream media have gone ballistic over it nevertheless.

The buckshot heard round the world.  Vice President Cheney shot a friend of his — Harry Whittington — with buckshot in a bird hunting accident.  While his friend was bleeding on the ground, Cheney failed to call the Washington press corps first.  Instead he was worried about Harry Whittington bleeding on the ground and taking care of him, and then contacting Harry's wife and adult kids before the story got out on the wire service.

[Attention gun-hating news writers:  It was BIRD shot.  Buckshot would have killed the old man.]

The media's Cheney hunt.  What really shocked people was the way our Cheney-hating press corps went crazy with it.  The Big Three networks aired 34 stories in the first 48 hours of evening and morning newscasts.  They treated this not as a mishap, and then a punchline, but as a brewing national scandal.

A Hunter's Take on Cheney's Mistake.  Hey hysterical media chum suckers, if you want to obsess about a gun (or guns) in South Texas, why don't you travel a little further southwest from Corpus Christi to Laredo where U.S. authorities just snatched ready-to-detonate IEDs, materials for making 33 more, military style grenades, 26 grenade triggers, large quantities of AK-47 and AR-15 assault rifles, 1280 rounds of ammo, silencers, machine gun assembly kits, 300 primers, bullet proof vests, police scanners, sniper scopes, narcotics and cash from Mexican dope dealers?

Killer Cheney.  This commentator rations himself to only one prediction every 15 years.  Mine now is that there is going to be a devastating backlash in the months and years ahead in the matter of Cheney and the quail shoot.

News magazines overdo Cheney-gate.  Texas lawyer Harry Whittington getting peppered by Cheney was a cover story in both magazines.  White House lawyer Vince Foster shooting himself dead in 1993 was not.


Washington Post Still on Bush Twins Beer Patrol:  The prestige press continues to cover anonymous accounts of the drinking habits of President Bush's daughters, while ignoring actual photos snapped recently showing Chelsea Clinton so drunk that she had to be carried out of a London nightclub.

The case against James Riady:  The media has failed to report the real extent of Riady's crimes and how light the punishment is.

In Washington, Hindsight is 20/400:  In this context, the current media fetish over "What did Bush know and when did he know it?" back on 9/11 shows neither a left-wing nor a right-wing bias.  Instead, it merely dramatizes the existence of an empty-headed media culture in which our intellectuals and leaders have simply run out of ideas.

Thinking The Unthinkable About Bush:  The media should investigate and report on the seriously flawed intelligence apparatus that could have, and possibly should have prevented 9/11 from happening.  But to suggest, to hint that the President (Bush or Clinton, doesn't matter) allowed it to happen is an outrage of the highest order.

Is PBS Making You Sick?  The Los Angeles Times recently reported that the taxpayer-subsidized PBS television is suffering from serious ratings problems.  Perhaps the problem lies with the fact that PBS leadership wants to preach a creed, rather than serve its viewers.  But the public doesn't want a lecture; they want entertainment as well as balanced and intellectually challenging news programming.

The Taxpayer-Funded Dogma of PBS:  American taxpayers have long subsidized the indoctrination efforts of the "Public Broadcasting Service" (PBS) via various combinations of historical revisionism, moral relativism, anti-Christian humanism, and pseudo-scientific evolutionism.

The rise of religious radio:  A Variety magazine editorial lambasted Christian radio as "strident."  "It is, like, nuts," complained one NPR general manager to The New York Times.  What's nuts is for the publicly subsidized radio chieftains to lament the unfairness of hardball private competition while they continue to draw on taxpayer funds to fight back.

Media Deem Reporter Far More Important Than Missionary:  Has anyone noticed how the media have given many, many times more attention to Daniel Pearl than to Martin Burnham?

The media's immigration blunders:  "ILLEGAL ALIEN QUESTIONED IN CHANDRA LEVY CASE."  Did you miss that headline in the news last week?  Well, that's because no one ran it.

What is the New York Times Promoting?  "Personnel is policy" is an old axiom in politics. It also applies to the world of journalism, as evidenced by recent developments at The New York Times, which has been trending even further left with recent appointments.  First, the Times promoted crusading liberal editorial page editor Howell Raines, who once publicly mourned that "the Reagan years oppressed me," to editor-in-chief.  Now, Richard Berke, the paper's national political correspondent since 1993, is being promoted to Washington editor, the number-two job in a bureau of more than 50 people.

If They Only had a Brain:  The Hard-Left adheres to their liberal pacifist ideology even in matters of life and death.  Our country is in a battle to the death with fanatical terrorists, and for a while, the Hard-Left was silent because they knew that if they openly criticized the president and his administration during a time of war, they would be toast.  That is, until last week when a fairly impressive strike was launched against the presidency of George W. Bush, covered with the fingerprints of the Hard-Left.  Key information was "leaked" and fingers pointed at the FBI.

Objective Journalism?  Not!  There's just something about Ashcroft, as fine a gentleman to serve in Washington as we've seen in many quadrennia, that PC journalists can't handle.

Media abandon Zimbabweans:  Although conditions in Zimbabwe continue to deteriorate – with ongoing seizures of white-owned farms, state-sanctioned murder and harassment, and a dangerous famine – the misery has failed to gain the attention of the establishment Western media, leaving many inside the nation feeling hopeless and abandoned.

Blacks take over farms as whites flee police:  At least 20 white farmers were rounded up and flung into police cells across Zimbabwe as hundreds of new black farmers, the beneficiaries of recently-appropriated white-owned land, celebrated their new opportunities.

Media Silent on Pipe Bomber's Leftism:  The same media establishment that is quick to label right-wing extremists refuses to call admitted pipe bomber Luke John Helder a left-wing extremist.  Helder, an art student from Minneosta who plays in a punk rock band, sent a rambling letter to the University of Wisconsin student newspaper expressing his radical environmental views and wish to legalize marijuana.

ABC's Terry Moran Distorts Armey's Remarks:  Terry Moran, the ABC White House correspondent noted for his unpleasantly juvenile manner at press briefings, charged that GOP House Majority Leader Dick Armey echoed former Yugoslav president and indicted war criminal Slobodan Milosevic in calling for ethnic cleansing of Palestinians – something Armey never said.

CNN Runs "Propaganda" for Castro:  Cable News Network, the only American television news organization with a full-time bureau in Cuba, has "allowed itself to become just another component of Fidel Castro's propaganda machine," instead of "exposing the totalitarian regime that runs Cuba," Media Research Center charged in a report released Thursday [5/9/2002].

Distrust of Media Threatens Freedoms:  Houston-based true-crime writer Vanessa Leggett's record 140 days, and counting, detainment as the longest-jailed journalist in US history has brought forth no shortage of support or editorials from media organizations.  But, the true crime is not necessarily Leggett's lengthy detention, but the media's selective outrage in protecting their own.

Bush Drug Bust Makes Big News; Not So Clinton Rehab Report:  The media are having a field day with the drug bust of 24-year-old Noelle Bush, daughter of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, whose attempt to fake a tranquilizer prescription catapulted her to the top of the news Tuesday [1/29/2002].  But when the last name is Clinton – as it was when the ex-president's brother, Roger, checked himself into Arizona's Cottonwood de Tuscon drug rehab clinic in July – the media feeding frenzy never quite materializes.

TV as Ministry of Truth:  The controversy over anti-drug messages on TV shows could only happen in a government-controlled medium.

"No Spin Zone": O'Reilly Tackles Jesse Jackson.  For years and years, Jesse Jackson has not only gotten a pass from the mainstream media, he's been all but deified by them.  This in spite of the Rev. Jackson's propensity to pop up wherever there's an opportunity for him to capitalize on some well-publicized tragedy, disaster or anything else he can transform into a publicity platform for himself.  The phoniness of his publicity stunts, though obvious, is studiously ignored by his legion of supporters in the liberal media.

Would "Deep Throat" Play a Second Time?  Enron failed early in Bush's administration.  The mistakes and shenanigans that brought down the company occurred during the Clinton administration.  The cooked books happened before President Bush was elected.  But facts don't matter to a news media that serve as the propaganda arm for the Democratic Party.  True to form, The Washington Post on Jan. 24 gave an entire page to a "primer" on Enron.  Under the section "Political Interactions," the propaganda organ listed only Republicans.

 New!   Deep Throat and Watergate:  Time to Come Clean.  Deep Throat may not exist and Woodward and Bernstein may have been lying to us for all these years.  In other words, Woodward and Bernstein may be far from ethical journalists who deliberately lie to their readers.  Yet the liberal media has made these characters into folk heroes?  Why?