Media Bias | Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion - Part 50
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Media Bias Tag

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on February 06, 2017 45 Comments
On CNN this morning, David Gregory, speaking of President Trump's tweeting—and specifically, those from this weekend criticizing the judge who blocked his executive order on immigration—said: "he sounds like an old man sitting on his porch yelling at somebody to get off his lawn." Added Gregory: "you've had in the first 18 days, successive weekends where he has completely derailed what his administration is trying to do with a kind of personal indulgence by attacking people personally, launching an attack on the separation of powers. But what it really comes down to is this obsession with himself, and I think that's going to start to wear thin."

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on February 03, 2017 20 Comments
No one can take a joke these days, especially not media outlets driven by confirmation bias. The Daily Mail was the first outlet to report Supreme Court Justice nominee Neil Gorsuch started a club in high school called "Fascism Forever". Touted as an "exclusive", The Daily Mail must've obtained a copy of a yearbook. Rather than focus on the numerous conservative tendencies of the young Gorsuch, also included in the yearbook, the Daily Mail ran with the clearly satirical "Fascism Forever Club."

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on February 02, 2017 14 Comments
For all the hubbub over "fake news", major news outlets are making a name for themselves peddling misinformation and inaccurate reports. Like this New York Times report. Here's how the NYT ran the story:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on February 02, 2017 20 Comments
The 2016 election cycle and subsequent presidential coverage made painfully clear the disconnect between the political media and the rest of the real world. East Coast and particularly Beltway elites could not wrap their heads around Trump's win and for good reason -- they do not experience or live in the same world as the country that elected Trump president. As they've learned, the world does not revolve around D.C. or Manhattan. Which explains why Reuters Editor-in-Chief Steve Adler sent a very public memo to staffers (no accident there) reminding them what journalism is and how it ought to be conducted.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 28, 2017 83 Comments
Yesterday Donald Trump signed an Executive Order on refugees and visa entry procedures. You should read the actual EO, because most of the media and leftist pundits either have not or are lying if they have. There are some stark policy differences about immigration and refugees over which people can disagree -- those were argued at length during the election season. But the hyperbole and frenzy being exhibited in the media and by leftist pundits is hyperbole at best, fakery and lying at worst.

Posted by Mary Chastain on January 25, 2017 8 Comments
Is anyone shocked? Pro-abortion females descended upon Washington, D.C., to protest rights they already have and the media went wild. These females received all the attention they wanted and then some. Now, on Friday, tens to hundreds of thousands will come to D.C. as they do every year. No matter the weather, these people march every year. Every year it gets bigger. Yet the media ignores them. That's because these people participate in the March For Life against abortion, the act that literally denies a human being the right to life. The most basic human right. Even more disturbing? The majority of those unborn lost to abortion are females. More irony? These feminists backed a woman who remains married to a man who has a long list of women who have accused him of rape and sexual assault.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on January 24, 2017 23 Comments
From the man who brought us "fake but accurate" . . . Dan Rather is possibly the living person least entitled to pontificate about the importance of truth in journalism and politics. So naturally, Chris Matthews invited him on this evening's Hardball to do just that. Hat tip Colleen B. In criticizing Kellyanne Conway's use of the term "alternative facts" to explain White House spokesman Sean Spicer's comments while addressing the press this past Saturday, Rather said: "facts, and the truth . . . are at the very foundation of our democracy."

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on January 23, 2017 16 Comments
The New York Times editorial board entitled their traditional post-inaugural address commentary, "What President Trump Doesn't Get About America."  What it reveals, however, is quite different.  While one can reasonably expect an op-ed to lean in a particular direction and address policy differences, the editorial board's main criticism of President Trump's inauguration speech is centered on his, to their minds, unflattering portrait of America. Seemingly still reeling from "their" loss in November, the board focuses on the parts of Trump's speech that Obama could have easily read in his own first inauguration.  Former president Obama's 2009 inaugural address, however, was met with gushing enthusiasm for his unflattering portrait of America as "in decline" and "in crisis."

Posted by Mike LaChance on January 21, 2017 49 Comments
The liberal media is looking for something to console itself. Anything to show that Obama's election was bigger, better and more important than Trump's. The latest talking point seems to be that Obama drew a bigger crowd at his inaugurations than Trump. The New York Times reports:
Trump’s Inauguration vs. Obama’s: Comparing the Crowds An analysis of news footage appears to indicate that fewer people attended President Trump’s inauguration than President Obama’s in 2009. The footage on this page was captured 45 minutes before each oath of office. Attendees were still entering the National Mall up until Mr. Trump’s speech.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on January 20, 2017 30 Comments
Joe Scarborough reported something stunning on today's Morning Joe—an insight into just how blatantly, consciously biased one of America's leading newspapers was in its effort to elect Hillary Clinton. Said Scarborough:

"There was somebody that held an extraordinarily important position in print media who brought their people together after Hillary Clinton lost and literally said, 'we did the best we could do. We tried and we failed. But we did the best we could do.'"

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on January 17, 2017 13 Comments
Mika Brzezinski is an unabashed liberal, someone who pushed Elizabeth Warren to run for president and subsequently became a Bernie Sanders fan. But she has also proved herself willing to criticize her own, be they politicians or, as this morning, fellow members of the MSM. On today's Morning Joe, Brzezinski first criticized CNN's Jim Acosta for his pro-John Lewis speech in the guise of a question to MLK III after his meeting with Donald Trump. A bit later, she expanded on the point in a very pointed way: "we [in the MSM] decipher Democrats and make them sound great. And we make Republicans sound like complete—the word we won't use."

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on January 11, 2017 42 Comments
It's one fabulously nasty mess both CNN and Buzzfeed created for themselves. Buzzfeed decided to publish an unsubstantiated dossier full of all kinds of licentious information about president-elect Trump, particularly that he has "deep ties to Russia". CNN then ran with the Buzzfeed story. The backstory on how the dossier came to be is as bizarre as the document itself. NOTHING, not even the tiniest little accusation in the report was verified before Buzzfeed hit "publish." They even mentioned that the document had been bouncing around news outlets and reporters for months. Such open secrets are not uncommon. Stories, videos, documents, especially those most sensational in nature are frequently shopped to blogs, news orgs, and reporters. Everyone knows about them. Everyone talks about them. But no one reports them. Why? Because their veracity is unprovable.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on January 11, 2017 39 Comments
Of all the Morning Joe crew, you might be surprised to learn that it was liberal Dem Mika Brzezinski who this morning took the toughest shots at CNN and Buzzfeed for publishing unverified stories containing salacious allegations regarding Donald Trump's business dealings with, and personal behavior in, Russia. Mika also speculated that the intelligence community might have propagated the story as payback for Trump having insulted them. Brzezinski first wondered whether CNN and Buzzfeed went with the story "because they hate [Trump] so much, or is the intelligence community literally putting the screws to Donald Trump because he insulted them?"

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on January 08, 2017 17 Comments
You probably have not heard the names Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom. But I remember those names, and the tears that were brought to my eyes when I heard about what happened to them. On January 7, 2007, the young white couple—Channon was 21, her boyfriend Chris was 23—was abducted, beaten, raped, tortured, and murdered.  Chris eventually shot to death before being set on fire, and Channon left to die with a plastic bag over her head in a trash can.  The perpetrators were all black. If you have not heard their story, it's because the racial nature of that black-on-white crime was uncomfortable for the national media a decade ago. Even now, it's uncomfortable, as the delayed and reluctant coverage of the Chicago tortures showed. Here is their story.

Posted by Mike LaChance on December 31, 2016 8 Comments
What a difference eight years makes. With few exceptions, our national media is confused and depressed about the prospect of President Donald Trump. Back in 2008 however, the media was downright giddy over the election of Obama. Some journalists even wanted George W. Bush to step aside early so Obama could be sworn in before January 20th. The Media Research Center recorded all of this for posterity:
December 15, 2008 - Must Swear In Obama Right Now “We can’t afford to waste an hour, much less a day or a week or a month. And this business of being a lame duck President and saying, you know, ‘Adios. I’m going to the ranch. I’m just not going to do very much during this period.’ We can’t afford it....We’re in possibly, possibly the biggest crisis we’ve been in since December 7, 1941, and maybe since the time of the Civil War. So, we can’t afford to have this interregnum.” — Ex-CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, December 5.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 26, 2016 21 Comments
The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats starts with words (highlighted) I think of very often:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
I recently highlighted those words, "the center cannot hold," to a friend when describing some of the insane rantings I've seen on Facebook against Trump and about the election result. Liberals have lost it.