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Media Bias Tag

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 24, 2017 27 Comments
You almost certainly have heard of Anne Frank. It's unlikely that until Trump's election you heard of an entity calling itself the "Anne Frank Center (US)." That's because for most of its history, AFCUS has quietly done work educating people about Anne Frank. Then in the spring of 2016 everything changed. AFCUS changed its focus, hired a political activist named Steven Goldstein, and began to reposition itself as a social justice organization. AFCUS has, since Trump's election, issued a series of inflammatory statements that get gobbled up by the media looking to bash Trump.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on April 18, 2017 45 Comments
You wouldn't know it from reading the Associated Press headline, but the latest terrorist attack which left three dead was perpetrated by a gunman who yelled, "Allahu Akbar" while being arrested. The AP isn't wrong that the suspect said "God is great", but why translate a common jihadi mantra? Thanks to 9/11 and the ensuing war on terror, ever American is familiar with the negative connotations of "Allahu Akbar".

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on April 14, 2017 11 Comments
Looks like President Trump's dropping of the MOAB might have had an even bigger impact on Morning Joe than it did on ISIS. In March, the show was in full Apocalypse Now mode about President Trump. Take this excerpt from my item of March 6th: "Joe and Mika waxed apocalyptic, claiming the country is 'in crisis' and questioning President Trump’s 'stability.' At one point, Mika even seemed to choke up as she said, 'this is really a dark time which could get worse.'” Cut to today, when, in the wake of foreign policy success on the Russia, China, Syria and Afghanistan fronts, Morning Joe's tone on President Trump has changed radically. There was praise across the board, from Joe, Mika and Willie, as well as from regular guests David Ignatius, John Heilemann and Mark Halperin.

Posted by Mary Chastain on April 12, 2017 24 Comments
And the mainstream media wonders why Americans hate them so much. The media went into a tizzy over a speech Attorney General Jeff Sessions gave to border patrol agents on Tuesday. The Wall Street Journal published an article with these two paragraphs:
In remarks Tuesday to Border Patrol agents at the US-Mexico Border in Nogales, Ariz., Mr. Sessions spoke in stark terms about the threat he said illegal immigration posed. “We mean international criminal organizations that turn cities and suburbs into warzones, that rape and kill innocent citizens,” Mr. Sessions said, according to the text of his prepared remarks. “It is here, on this sliver of land, where we first take our stand against this filth.”
That's NOT what he said.

Posted by Mary Chastain on April 12, 2017 27 Comments
Kansas Treasurer Ron Estes won the special election in the 4th district against Democratic civil rights attorney James Thompson. Estes won with 52% of the vote. Democrats tried to spin the win into a positive because the margin of victory was small. Naturally, many members of the political media joined them.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on April 11, 2017 40 Comments
On this evening's Hardball, Chris Matthews repeatedly analogized the Trump family to the Tsarist Romanov family that ruled Russia. Matthews ominously concluded, "we know what happened to the Romanovs." Of course, "what happened to the Romanovs" is that the Tsar and his family were killed by Bolshevik troops in 1918, during the Russian revolution. Nice analogy, Chris.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 07, 2017 5 Comments
The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, like the rest of the entertainment industry, is no friend of the Trump administration or Press Secretary Sean Spicer. But sometimes the entertainment industry, in its desire to mock Trump, ends up mocking itself or other Trump haters. We saw that with the Saturday Night Live skit about a Trump-loving dog. And Noah did the same thing portraying Spicer as a kindergarten teacher dealing with unruly press children.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on April 04, 2017 26 Comments
See update below: Scarborough rips 'hallelujah chorus' dismissing Rice controversy ------------------------------ Move over, Democrats. There's a new opposition party in town. And its name is CNN. Opening his show this morning with a discussion of the emerging controversy over the unmasking of the names of Trump associates in intelligence intercepts, Chris Cuomo said, "so President Trump wants you to believe that he is the victim of a 'crooked scheme.' Those are his words. And here are our words: there is no evidence of any wrongdoing." So it's Trump's words vs. "our words." As if Trump and CNN are two opposing political movements.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on April 03, 2017 21 Comments
Kibitzing about Donald Trump's mental health is a favorite MSM parlor game. But Morning Joe took it to a new level today, devoting its long, opening segment to the matter. Donny Deutsch and Joe Scarborough were the ringleaders, playing Drs. Freud and Jung, respectively. Excerpts:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 31, 2017 21 Comments
The Washington Post ran a story last night continuing the media effort to brand everyone in the Trump administration to be incompetent at best, and creepy to boot. This time the target was Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. In the article, based entirely on supposed anonymous sources, WaPo asserted that Tillerson is so weird he doesn't even let career diplomats make eye contact with him, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spends his first weeks isolated from an anxious bureaucracy (emphasis added):

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on March 31, 2017 17 Comments
On today's Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough argued that the MSM is failing to cover the story of the Obama admin "unmasking"and leaking the names of Trump campaign people caught up in the intercepts of Russians. According to Scarborough, 95% of the story is the attempt by the Russians to influence the election. But that still leaves the 5% that the MSM is ignoring because the people unmasked were disliked, and in the case of Michael Flynn, "loathed" by the media. In contrast, said Scarborough, the improper activity was "by people who, let's face it, most of the people in the media like and admire."

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on March 29, 2017 19 Comments
Late Tuesday night, California's Attorney General charged David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt with a whopping fifteen felonies. Daleiden and Merritt, by way of the Center for Medical Progress (CMP), released several horrifying undercover videos exposing Planned Parenthood officials negotiating the price of aborted baby parts. California is a two-party consent state, meaning both parties in any recording must consent to be recorded. 14 of the 15 charges are for recording confidential conversations without consent. The last is for conspiracy to commit a felony by recording private conversations at a conference. Placing the two-party consent nonsense on hold for a moment, Daleiden and Merritt made two errors through the course of their investigation, one of which was omitted from the charges levied against them.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on March 25, 2017 14 Comments
John Harwood is the CNBC journalist who advised Hillary's campaign on how to handle Ben Carson and later bragged to Hillary campaign chairman John Podesta about the rude questions he posed to Donald Trump during a debate. Harwood's attacks on Republican candidates as a moderator of a Republican primary debate were met with near universal mockery. Legal Insurrection's persistent exposure of Harwood eventually led Harwood to block Legal Insurrection on Twitter. Harwood resumed his routine on Joy Reid's MSNBC show this morning. Harwood claimed that Republicans are "radically opposed to government itself" and asserted that "governing is about taking action to solve people's problems."

Posted by David Gerstman on March 19, 2017 14 Comments
Last week the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), a group comprised entirely of Arab countries, issued a report accusing Israel of practicing apartheid against the Palestinians. Having a U.N. group make such an accusation was considered a major propaganda win for the anti-Israel movement. As discussed below, the report was authored by people with longstanding anti-Israel records. The report was so disgraceful in content and so obviously political in motive that by Friday the Secretary General of the UN had first disassociated himself from the report and then asked that it removed from the ESCWA's website. Also on Friday, Rima Khalaf, the Jordanian head of ESCWA resigned. Nikki Haley, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., is credited by many as working to negate this anti-Israel move. This may be a sign of a new U.S. assertiveness at the U.N.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on March 18, 2017 9 Comments
The internet exploded this week with the "news" that President Trump's budget proposal included cutting and/or completely eliminating the Meals on Wheels program.  The headlines were outrageous clickbait that had little to do with the actual budget proposal. For example, New York Magazine has an article entitled, "White House Says Cutting Meals on Wheels is 'Compassionate'," Rolling Stone has one entitled "Meals on Wheels Seniors Respond to Trump: Cut Something Else," the BBC writes that "Meals on Wheels cut back prompts backlash," and Slate declares that "Trump's budget director says Meals on Wheels sounds great but doesn't work." The problem with these and the many other such headlines is that Trump is not cutting, and is certainly not eliminating, Meals on Wheels.
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