Media Bias | Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion - Part 46
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Media Bias Tag

Posted by Leslie Eastman on June 18, 2017 14 Comments
As we approach the 150 day mark for President Donald Trump's first term, I thought in might be useful to have a retrospective post about how the American press has presented his record, outside of Twitter, Russia and Comey hearings...and highlight some of his underreported victories. Professor Jacobson so noted, the news cycle is essentially over for the assassination attempt on the Republican congressional baseball team. To be sure, if the Democratic congressional representatives had been targeted (and the assassin found with a list of Democratic targets in his pocket), this would have been "top of the fold" for many more weeks to come.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on June 18, 2017 82 Comments
In the wake of the Scalise shooting, Fareed Zakaria hosted a segment on his CNN show this morning devoted to addressing how Republicans and Democrats can stop their "internecine struggle" and "reconcile." Two of the guests bought into the premise, discussing the challenges involved and possible approaches to reconciliation. But the third guest, Jill Abramson, who was fired in 2014 as executive editor of the New York Times, was having none of the kumbaya. To the contrary, she decried a supposed "false equivalency" between Democrats and Republicans. Abramson put the blame on Republicans for the divisive political climate and accused them of "benefiting from a kind of rage machine that operates in this country."

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on June 15, 2017 37 Comments
Yes, let's all come together, hold hands, unite . . . and blame President Trump for the shooting of Steve Scalise and others yesterday. Morning Joe opened today with predictable pieties, Joe Scarborough saying, for example, that "the heated rhetoric in this country has to calm down." But before the show's first hour had ended, Mika Brzezinski turned the heat up to 11 by pointing the finger for the Scalise shooting in part at the president. An emotional Mika, after accusing President Trump of "promoting violence on the campaign trail," continued:
"I'm not putting anything squarely on the president, but I have to say that this is the new added dynamic to what is a very dangerous climate."

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on June 13, 2017 17 Comments
In the wake of the Kathy Griffin severed-head fiasco, and the Central Park play depicting the assassination of President Trump, you'd think that pundits might have the good sense to lay off metaphors invoking the violent death of the president. But today comes law prof Jonathan Turley with yet another sanguinary simile. Appearing on Morning Joe to discuss President Trump's executive order on travel, Turley suggested that President Trump's tweets on the subject are undermining his case. Then Turley went there: "it's like a presidential version of death by cop. Every time you seem to make advances, the president seems to stand up and say 'shoot me, shoot me.'"

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on June 08, 2017 3 Comments
The French-German broadcaster ARTE has reportedly shelved a documentary on antisemitism because it doesn’t bash Israel enough. ARTE and WDR, the publicly-funded TV networks that commissioned the 90-minute documentary, have decided to confine the film to the archives, calling it “unbalanced”. “You can’t make a film on antisemitism without saying every three minutes that the Palestinians are the victims of Israelis,” the co-producer of the documentary, Joachim Schröder, told The Jerusalem Post. The documentary makers reject the objections publicised by the broadcasters as eyewash. “It’s not about balance,” Schröder was quoted saying in the German newspaper Bild, “How can a film on Antisemitism be ‘balanced’? ARD with offices in Strasbourg is obviously fearful of calling out the Jew-hatred in France and Germany.” Both ARTE and WDR are financed by German taxpayers.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on June 05, 2017 17 Comments
Video surfaced Sunday showing what appears to be a CNN film crew staging or at the very least, assisting with the optics of an anti-ISIS Muslim protest in London. Film crews from CNN, BBC, and the AP set up in the middle of the street well before any protest began and before protesters were in place.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on May 31, 2017 31 Comments
Q. Is there anything—anything!—about which the MSM won't criticize about the Trump administration? A. No, judging by the mind-bogglingly minuscule, absurd and hypocritical thing that Chris Matthews has found to carp about. On his Hardball show of May 30th, Matthews got bent out of shape over the fact that Jared Kushner . . . might have a car and driver take him to work at the White House. After video rolled of Kushner emerging from what is presumably his DC home and getting into an SUV with someone at the wheel, a vexed Matthews said:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 30, 2017 19 Comments
I was a guest on the Tommy Tucker Show on Louisiana superstation WWL this morning. We covered a wide range of topics over almost 17 minutes. Thanks to Tommy for giving me the time. 17 minutes in radio world is like a million years in real people time. We started with the weekend media eruption over Jared Kushner, "Backchannels," and the Robert Mueller special counsel investigation. I'll add some transcription shortly.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 23, 2017 6 Comments
There was a time during the first quarter of 2017, when the "Anne Frank Center (US)" aka Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect, was all over the news for the bashing and thrashing its Executive Director, Steven Goldstein, gave Donald Trump. A time limited Google Search reveals dozens of articles in which Goldstein was quoted as an authority on anti-Semitism and bashing Trump. Here is a small sample:

Posted by New Neo on May 22, 2017 19 Comments
Lately it seems as though there's a story a day reporting some new Trump administration scandal based on a leak from an anonymous government "official." We are asked to take the facts in those stories on trust, without a chance to evaluate the veracity or motives of the source of the remarks. This over-reliance on the anonymous source gives both the journalist and his/her informant an overwhelming power. The most famous anonymous source of them all, of course, was Deep Throat of Watergate fame. He was not only a seminal figure in Nixon's denouement (and thus a hero to liberals everywhere), but he was so renowned that he had his own nickname, taken from a popular porn flick. The reporters involved in the story became famous too; Bob Woodward was played by movie star Robert Redford and Carl Bernstein by Dustin Hoffman in the film "All the Presidents Men."

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on May 21, 2017 26 Comments
Bob Schieffer is an old-school newsman. There's no doubt that the former Face the Nation host leans left, but he is still capable of reporting, you know, the news. That is too much for denizens of the modern MSM to tolerate. On today's Reliable Sources on CNN, Schieffer reported the glaringly obvious truth: that President Trump gave a good speech in Saudi Arabia today. Guest host John Berman had to push back: "you know, Bob, though, that there will be people who look at that last comment you made and say you're normalizing the president." Schieffer gave the perfect response: he wasn't trying to normalize Trump, he was trying to do what reporters [are supposed to] do: report.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 21, 2017 34 Comments
As we've been discussing a lot lately, the media is in the middle of an attempt to bring down the Trump presidency. Call it a coup, a slow-motion coup, or whatever you want. False stories and conspiracy theories are invented and rolled out daily based almost entirely on anonymous sources for the obvious purpose of freezing the administration, enabling corrupting leaks from the bureaucracy, and making it impossible to govern.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on May 20, 2017 26 Comments
On Joy Reid's show this morning, MSNBC terrorism analyst Malcolm Nance said that if the United States "were some third-world nation right now, we'd be watching the army to see if the tanks are getting ready to move for a coup. Or if a guy jumps on a plane and flies to Monaco with all the money from the state." Sounds like a "helpful" suggestion/wishful thinking from MSNBC. Nance, by the way, is the person who nominated a Trump property for an ISIS suicide attack. To date, there's no evidence online that he has apologized or been disciplined by MSNBC.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 20, 2017 40 Comments
I'm so old, I remember when the breaking news was that James Comey was fired because he sought additional resources from the Department of Justice for the Russia investigation. The New York Times broke the story on May 10, 2017, Days Before Firing, Comey Asked for More Resources for Russia Inquiry:
Days before he was fired as F.B.I. director, James B. Comey asked the Justice Department for more prosecutors and other personnel to accelerate the bureau’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the presidential election. It was the first clear-cut evidence that Mr. Comey believed the bureau needed more resources to handle a sprawling and highly politicized counterintelligence investigation.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on May 19, 2017 46 Comments
Regular readers are familiar with my disdain for Trump, having been a Never Trumper prior to the election. However, once he was elected, Trump became my president because that's just how life works. (My thoughts on that here.) I'm still skeptical of Trump's ability to do the job well, but I grow increasingly aggravated with the collective political media set who seem to be doing everything in their power to destroy this presidency. We don't have an opportunity to praise or criticize the administration and their efforts because the whole of our time is spent debunking misreported claims based on anonymous sources, none of which are favorable to Trump.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 17, 2017 33 Comments
I can't recall a media feeding frenzy quite like has been directed at Donald Trump. What's remarkable about this frenzy is that it takes place in the absence -- as of now -- of any actual evidence of Trump wrongdoing, much less illegality. More on that later in the post. Sometimes I think it resembles how the media swarmed all over Mitt Romney after Benghazi in September 2012, accusing him of politicizing the deaths of four Americans. The media purpose plainly was to help Obama escape political damage by making the story about Romney. I wrote about it at the time, Dead Ambassador dragged through streets, MSM furious at Romney criticism of Obama: