Tag Archives: media bias debate

FNC’s Fox Newswatch Highlights Winner in MRC’s Online Voting for Worst Bias of 2010

Posted on December 18, 2010 by Benny Hollywood| Comments Off on FNC’s Fox Newswatch Highlights Winner in MRC’s Online Voting for Worst Bias of 2010

FNC’s Fox Newswatch on Saturday highlighted a winner in the MRC’s online balloting, in which many NewsBusters readers took part ( Friday NB post announcing who you picked for Quote of the Year ), for the annual awards for the year’s worst reporting. Host Jon Scott announced: The results are in. The Media Research Center conducted an online poll asking the public to vote on the worst biased reporting. First up, the winner of the Poison Teapot Award for Smearing the Anti-Obama Rabble , goes to PBS's Tavis Smiley for this: read more

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FNC’s Fox Newswatch Highlights Winner in MRC’s Online Voting for Worst Bias of 2010

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AP Report Avoids Noting Worst-Ever Month for Housing Units Completed, Worst Nov. Ever in Starts and Permits

Posted on December 17, 2010 by Benny Hollywood| Comments Off on AP Report Avoids Noting Worst-Ever Month for Housing Units Completed, Worst Nov. Ever in Starts and Permits

Leave it to the Associated Press, with the assistance of the “magic” of seasonal adjustments, to make the November housing market appear as if it was a bit better than the two months that preceded it. It wasn't. Thursday, the wire service grabbed the single crumb that was available, namely the Census Bureau's report earlier that day that annualized, seasonally adjusted housing starts had increased by about 4% and turned it into a decidedly positive headline: “Home construction up after 2 months of declines.” AP Economics Writer Jeannine Aversa watered down the headline in her very first sentence, describing the “up” part of the headline as a “nudge.” That's nowhere near enough. The available evidence indicates that November may have been the worst month the homebuilding industry has had in 4-5 decades of related recordkeeping. read more

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AP Report Avoids Noting Worst-Ever Month for Housing Units Completed, Worst Nov. Ever in Starts and Permits

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Bloomberg News ‘Follows the Money,’ But Only in Direction of Death Tax Opponents

Posted on December 13, 2010 by Benny Hollywood| Comments Off on Bloomberg News ‘Follows the Money,’ But Only in Direction of Death Tax Opponents

There's little point in “following the money” if you only follow it in one direction. And too often, journalists only follow the money to the right, leaving shady financial dealings from the left unexposed. That's exactly what Bloomberg News reporter Ryan Donmoyer did in a recent article on the death tax provisions of President Obama's tax deal with congressional Republicans. As the Washington Examiner's Tim Carney noticed , Donmoyer dutifully noted the indirect financial stake in the death tax debate of a conservative group that opposes the tax, but ignored a similar conflict on the parts of some of the tax's proponents. read more

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Bloomberg News ‘Follows the Money,’ But Only in Direction of Death Tax Opponents

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Deceive the Children: NYT ‘Learning Network’ Frames Federal Income Tax Rate Extension as Benefiting ‘Especially the Wealthy’

Posted on December 12, 2010 by Benny Hollywood| Comments Off on Deceive the Children: NYT ‘Learning Network’ Frames Federal Income Tax Rate Extension as Benefiting ‘Especially the Wealthy’

A New York Times “Learning Network” graphic informs us that under the proposed Obama-GOP tax and spending compromise, “rates will not change for at least two years for anyone.” Wow. Somebody at the Learning Network needs to tell the Old Gray Lady's beat reporters, editorial board, and opinion columnists. Just today, reporter Helene Cooper, in noting

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AP’s Crutsinger Issues Incomplete, Sloppy, Misleading Report on November’s Record Deficit, Obama-GOP ‘Tax-Cut Plan’

Posted on December 12, 2010 by Benny Hollywood| Comments Off on AP’s Crutsinger Issues Incomplete, Sloppy, Misleading Report on November’s Record Deficit, Obama-GOP ‘Tax-Cut Plan’

How can you cover a story about Uncle Sam's November Monthly Treasury Statement and the proposed Obama-GOP compromise on taxes and unemployment benefits without using the words “spending,” “receipts,” any form of “collect,” or “unemployment”? It's a neat trick, but the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger pulled it off in his Friday afternoon dispatch shortly after the government report's release. Instead of communicating apparently boring facts, Crutsinger concentrated his fire on the “tax-cut agreement” with a supposed “cost (of) $855 billion over two years” worked out by President Obama and Congressional Republicans. In doing so, he “somehow” failed to mention that the proposal includes a 13-month extension of unemployment benefits. Based on a comparison

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Media Emphasis on ‘Holiday Shopping’ Directly Contradicts Public’s Stated Preferences

Posted on December 7, 2010 by Benny Hollywood| Comments Off on Media Emphasis on ‘Holiday Shopping’ Directly Contradicts Public’s Stated Preferences

There are many areas where the establishment press's terminology preferences are significantly out of sync with everyday usage by the general public. To name just two examples, the ever so PC press routinely replaces publicly favored and more informative terms such as “illegal immigrants” and “Muslim terrorists” with “undocumented workers” and “militants.” And of course, we can't forget the press's affection for “a certain late-term pregnancy-ending procedure,” when it's really “partial-birth abortion.” Though the disconnect I'm about to describe isn't as serious as the ones just noted, there is another area where press terminology is at wide variance with the public's preferences. That would be in how to describe the shopping season that occurs from Thanksgiving until the end of the year. For a while, the press's terminology choices seemed to be winning over retailers. But at least this year, that isn't so, as noted in an item at Advertising Age (HT to Tim Graham at NewsBusters, who tweeted on this about 10 days ago): read more

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Media Emphasis on ‘Holiday Shopping’ Directly Contradicts Public’s Stated Preferences

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AP’s Misnamed Wiseman Joins the ‘BLS Must Be Wrong’ Brigade, Questioning Dismal Employment Report’s Validity

Posted on December 5, 2010 by Benny Hollywood| Comments Off on AP’s Misnamed Wiseman Joins the ‘BLS Must Be Wrong’ Brigade, Questioning Dismal Employment Report’s Validity

At the Associated Press late Sunday afternoon , reporter Paul Wiseman, who may have the most inappropriate last name in the history of business journalism, engaged in a brazen “It's really not that bad” excuse-making exercise on behalf of the economy Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Ben Bernanke have created. In the process, he joined a Reuters reporter in questioning the validity of the information Friday's Employment Situation Report. read more

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AP’s Misnamed Wiseman Joins the ‘BLS Must Be Wrong’ Brigade, Questioning Dismal Employment Report’s Validity

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AP Reporters Try to Breathe Life Into Moribund UN Cancun Climate Conference

Posted on December 5, 2010 by Benny Hollywood| Comments Off on AP Reporters Try to Breathe Life Into Moribund UN Cancun Climate Conference

I do hope that Associated Press reporters Arthur Max and Charles J. Hanley are finding some recreational time while they are reporting from Cancun about what's happening at the ” United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.” The pair's bosses ought to be asking them how much real attention they are paying to the festivities since they began. For example, as far as I can tell from two reports by Mr. Max ( here and here ), he seems to have missed the opening prayer to the pagan goddess Ixchel; Ken Shepherd at NewsBusters took note of it from thousands of miles away.

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Psst! GM and Chrysler Are Peddling Eeeevil Light Trucks and SUVs to a Greater Extent Than Any Other Maker

Posted on December 2, 2010 by Benny Hollywood| Comments Off on Psst! GM and Chrysler Are Peddling Eeeevil Light Trucks and SUVs to a Greater Extent Than Any Other Maker

Here's something about which the environmentalists and car czars planted inside the Obama administration can't be pleased: as a percentage of their U.S. sales, Multi-Government/General Motors and Chrysler are selling more “light trucks,” consisting of pickups, SUVS, and “crossover” vehicles than any other major manufacturer. Further, the companies are clearly emphasizing light trucks at the expense of their car models. I wonder how a government promise to accomplish this would have been received by the fossil-fuels-are-awful media at bankruptcy crunch time last year? You can pretty much count on this inconvenient product mix not getting a great deal of establishment press attention while it drools over the underpowered, heavily subsidized electric lemon known as the Chevy Volt and whatever toy disguised as a useful vehicle Chrysler/Fiat plans on foisting onto the market. The detail is at the Wall Street Journal's monthly report on vehicle sales (link will change in one month). Key items include these: read more

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Psst! GM and Chrysler Are Peddling Eeeevil Light Trucks and SUVs to a Greater Extent Than Any Other Maker

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Rush Rips AP’s Misnamed Wiseman As ‘Ignoramus’ Over Perils of Letting Unemployment Benefits Expire

Posted on November 30, 2010 by Benny Hollywood| Comments Off on Rush Rips AP’s Misnamed Wiseman As ‘Ignoramus’ Over Perils of Letting Unemployment Benefits Expire

In no uncertain terms, Rush Limbaugh (link will become unavailable in seven days) ripped into an Associated Press report today on the alleged perils of allowing unemployment benefits to expire for what the Labor Department says is nearly 2 million unemployed: I have not had one class in economics since high school in the 1960s — not one — and I understand more about this through my own self-education than these wizards at the AP. And I'm still convinced they just repeated it. They just printed a fax from Pelosi's office or whatever. … After 23 years and we still get trash like this in our major, #1 wire service. I guarantee you whoever wrote this story is an absolute, abject ignoramus. I don't know about you, folks, but I don't like being surrounded by stupidity. The chief ignoramus in question whose name Rush didn't have is the misnamed AP Economics Writer Paul Wiseman, with the ignorant assistance of Christopher Rugaber. Behold their ignorance: read more

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Rush Rips AP’s Misnamed Wiseman As ‘Ignoramus’ Over Perils of Letting Unemployment Benefits Expire

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