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Media Bias Tag

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on August 15, 2015 9 Comments
Comcast subsidiary NBC Universal recently purchased large shares of Buzzfeed and Vox Media. NBC Universal, "owns and operates a valuable portfolio of news and entertainment television networks, a premier motion picture company, significant television production operations, a leading television stations group, world-renowned theme parks, and a suite of leading Internet-based businesses." With NBCU sinking about $200 million into each respective media conglomeration, both Vox Media and Buzzfeed are reportedly valued at over $1 billion each. Though Buzzfeed is valued around $1.5 billion. Re/code reports:
...in addition to the NBCUniversal investment, the two companies now have a commercial partnership. That means, among other things, that they will collaborate on digital advertising, will work together on video advertising and video programming, and that you will likely see Vox Media employees more frequently on NBCU-owned networks like CNBC. (Re/code already had and continues to have a news partnership with CNBC).
Does this mean proliferation of Voxsplaining and cat gifs? Will the internet overtake television?! Is the future NOW?!

Posted by Mike LaChance on August 09, 2015 35 Comments
Scott Walker appeared on CBS This Morning Friday to talk about his campaign and how he did in the debate. Oddly enough, as soon as Walker started talking about Hillary Clinton, Norah O'Donnell wanted to shift the conversation to Donald Trump and obviously wanted Walker to answer for Trump's words and actions. Walker handled it well and tried to steer the conversation back to his campaign but O'Donnell persisted. She clearly wanted Walker to comment on Trump. Partial transcript via NewsBusters:
Rather than accept Walker’s rejection of Trump’s language, the CBS host continued to press the governor over Trump’s comments and demanded that he “denounce” his opponent:
You know that your own party did a full dissection of what happened in the last presidential campaign about how the Republican Party does among women and how they do among minorities. If you have the leading candidate in the Republican Party saying those things about women, when it was the largest gender gap in history in the last presidential election, can you denounce those comments here today, or is it just part of a freewheeling debate?
Here's the full video:

Posted by Mike LaChance on August 06, 2015 13 Comments
It's ironic and perhaps not accidental that tonight marks both the first Republican Primary debate on FOX News, and the final episode of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. I look forward to a ratings comparison next week. Stewart's political shell game occupies two sides of the same coin. On the first side rests Stewart's claim that he speaks truth to power---as long as Republicans are in charge, anyway. Once Obama became president and Democrats controlled everything else, Stewart became a protector of the powerful. On the second side we find what the Daily Caller's Jim Treacher calls the "clown nose on, clown nose off" routine. When Stewart says something that helps Democrats, he's hailed as a serious news analyst. When he says something outrageous about Republicans, hey---he's just a comedian. In honor of his last show, Justin Monticello and Alexis Garcia of Reason TV have put together a reel you won't see on Comedy Central any time soon:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 04, 2015 5 Comments
On August 2, 2014, in the middle of the Gaza conflict, we ran the A.F. Branco cartoon that is the featured image to this post. It's a fitting occasion to revisit the media bias that frames the international view of the 2014 Gaza conflict, as the fourth in our series looking back at our coverage. Our first three posts were: As before, we are focusing on revisiting our contemporaneous coverage. The international media is extremely sensitive to discussions of its bias, so much so that when, in June of 2015, the Israeli Foreign Ministry produced a comical short cartoon video poking fun at international media bias, the international media blew a gasket. The Foreign Ministry took down the video, though it was captured by others: Was this unfair to the international media? No, it was very fair, though overly simplified (just like the media's coverage of Gaza). Our posts from the summer of 2014 reflected the media bias. In that conflict, the media played a key role in covering up Hamas use of civilians as shields:

Posted by Anne in Petah Tikva on August 03, 2015 9 Comments
All of Israel is reeling with shock at the news of the firebombing of the Dawabshe family's home in the Palestinian village of Duma, in which 1 year old baby Ali Saad was killed and his parents and siblings very severely injured. Prof. Jacobson covered the story in his post which also covered the 2011 stabbing death of Hadas Fogel in her crib by Palestinian terrorists. [caption id="attachment_136619" align="alignnone" width="550"][Ali Dawabsheh and Hadas Fogel] [Ali Dawabsheh and Hadas Fogel][/caption]I covered baby Ali's story, the stabbing attack by an ultra-Orthodox man on the Jerusalem Gay Pride parade (in which one Israeli girl was killed and 5 others injured) and the reaction in Israel to these terrible attacks in my post on my own blog. The reality is that firebomb (Molotov cocktail) attacks are frequent, and almost always by Palestinians against Israelis. In fact, barely a day goes by without such firebombings.

Posted by Mike LaChance on August 01, 2015 14 Comments
MSNBC has pulled the plug on three shows. The Cycle, Now with Alex Wagner, and The Ed Show will no longer grace the TV screens of the struggling network's viewers. Dylan Byers of Politico broke the story this week:
MSNBC cancels three shows amid transition Alex Wagner and Ari Melber, a "Cycle" co-host and MSNBC's chief legal correspondent, will remain with the network. Ed Schultz, the host of "The Ed Show," will leave the network, as will "Cycle" co-hosts Abby Huntsman, Krystal Ball and Toure. MSNBC President Phil Griffin announced the news in a memo sent shortly after the initial version of this item was published. The cancellations, which have been expected for some time, come as NBC News chief Andrew Lack moves to refashion the liberal cable channel as a straight-forward news and politics offering, at least in daytime. In September, MSNBC will add a 5 p.m. program hosted by "Meet The Press" moderator Chuck Todd, while Brian Williams, the former "Nightly News" anchor, will serve as the network's breaking news and special reports anchor.
In honor of this occasion, NewsBusters has opened up their vault to look for some "worst of" moments from Alex Wagner and Ed Schultz. Here are a couple of examples:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 30, 2015 19 Comments
While the ire of the media has been focused mostly on Donald Trump for the past few news cycles, Scott Walker is still getting some scorn. This column by Dana Milbank at The Washington Post could all but be a campaign poster for walker, with a few wording changes:

Why Scott Walker is so dangerous [to liberals]

Why Scott Walker is so dangerous:
“First off,” Scott Walker proclaimed, “we took on the unions, and we won. We won!” Taking on the unions is usually first off for Walker, the Wisconsin governor and Republican presidential candidate. It is the very rationale for his candidacy. And on Thursday, he took a detour from the campaign trail to appear here before the annual meeting of the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council, a group of state legislators dedicated in large part to defeating unions.... Walker then went on to celebrate his triumphs over the demonstrators who objected to his dismantling of Wisconsin’s public-sector unions, portraying the pro-union forces as violent thugs....

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on July 28, 2015 34 Comments
Following the release of the second Planned Parenthood undercover video last week, Presidential hopeful Carly Fiorina joined Jake Tapper on The Lead. Tapper asked Fiorina to define her position on Governor Walker’s recent bill that prohibits abortions after twenty weeks and makes no exclusions for instances of rape and incest. Rather than taking the let's connect Fiorina to what the left believes is an extremist pro-life position bait, Fiorina directed attention to a bill bouncing around the Senate floor, “let’s talk about the legislation that’s sitting on the Senate floor right now which does allow for those exceptions,” she responded.

Posted by Amy Miller on July 28, 2015 19 Comments
This is probably...not...groundbreaking news, but just in case you haven't heard: comedian and talking head Jon Stewart serves at the pleasure of the Obama White House. Perhaps that's overstating it. Stewart may not jump at the behest of 1600 Penn, but the influential celebrity certainly enjoyed a level of access to the President not often experienced by even the most established members of friendly mainstream media outlets. It was Politico's scoop:
Jon Stewart slipped unnoticed into the White House in the midst of the October 2011 budget fight, summoned to an Oval Office coffee with President Barack Obama that he jokingly told his escort felt like being called into the principal’s office. In February 2014, Obama again requested Stewart make the trip from Manhattan to the White House, this time for a mid-morning visit hours before the president would go before television cameras to warn Russia that “there will be costs” if it made any further military intervention in Ukraine.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 24, 2015 42 Comments
When the Hillary Clinton email scandal first broke, Hillary's claims that she conducted her entire job as Secretary of State without classified information being transmitted through her private server and email account did not seem plausible to me. I said at the time that there was a Bigger Question: Did Hillary use unsecured email for Classified Info?:
As Secretary of State, Hillary presumably received classified and other protected information via email at least on occasion, since it was her only email account. That distinguishes her from predecessors, who at least had government email accounts. We need more facts on her usage, but if Hillary maintained classified documents (including emails) on an unclassified computer device and email account, that could raise much more serious issues than the records violation.... As Hillary heads towards the presumptive Democratic nomination for President, we need to know what Hillary did with her email account, and when did she do it.
Initially, the press accepted at face value Hillary's claim that there was no transmission of classified information from her private server/email account. https://youtu.be/uNgsze5yjG0?t=360 Slowly, it has been revealed that Yes, Hillary’s emails did contain classified information.

Posted by Amy Miller on July 23, 2015 30 Comments
This is not a drill: Al Sharpton is launching a media watch blog, and you're all invited to the party! According to Capital New York Sharpton's advocacy organization, the National Action Network, will launch "The Daily Shift," a new media criticism blog that organizers hope will give bloggers and citizen journalists a chance in the spotlight. The site was announced via the Instagram account of Rachel Noerdlinger, a Sharpton spokeswoman who briefly worked in the offices of New York Mayor Bill di Blasio:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 18, 2015 8 Comments
Periodically throughout this summer, we are taking a look back at our coverage of the 2014 Gaza conflict. It's important to do this because a relentless propaganda campaign portrays the conflict as initiated and continued by Israel in retaliation for the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens by a Hamas-affiliated cell in the West Bank. In fact, the conflict started as a result of relentless Hamas rocket fire into Israel, a topic we recently revisited in Gaza July 8, 2014 – Hamas Rockets Ignite War. On July 10, 2014, CNN reported on the Hamas rocket fire: In this post, we revisit how the ground war started only after Hamas rejected an Egyptian ceasefire proposal, which Israel had accepted. Had the conflict stopped at that point, only a small fraction of the deaths and destruction which eventually were visited on Gaza to try to stop the rocket fire would have happened. Hamas, and it supporters in the West including leading pro-BDS websites which justified and encouraged "the resistance," bear responsibility for what befell Gaza. On July 15, 2014, Hamas formally rejected the Egyptian ceasefire proposal and continued rocket fire into Israel.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 17, 2015 20 Comments
We are fans of Carly Fiorina. She should be on the stage at the debates, though it's not clear she will be. Fiorina has shown an ability to take on hostile questioners with a smile, as she slices and dices liberal talking points. That's why we have featured videos of her appearances several times. And it's why we were so disappointed in her Buzzfeed video. In this video, via Steven Crowder, Fiorina is at the top of her game. The interview is from late May, but it's a prime example of why Fiorina should be on the national stage:
“The scientists that tell us that climate change is real and caused by man made activity, also tell us that a single nation acting alone can make no difference at all. So, when I see a state like California destroy lives and livelihoods with environmental regulations that will make no difference at all to climate change, when I see the Obama administration take that same regulation and apply it nationally – it will make not difference at all, yet we’re destroying people’s lives and livelihoods – I wonder, why are we doing this? Why are we doing this when it won’t have any impact?

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 17, 2015 29 Comments
Ryan Grim (Washington bureau chief for The Huffington Post) and Danny Shea (Editorial Director, The Huffington Post), have announced that because Donald Trump in their eyes is a sideshow, any news about Trump will be banished from the "Politics" section of HuffPo News to the Entertainment section, A Note About Our Coverage Of Donald Trump's 'Campaign':
After watching and listening to Donald Trump since he announced his candidacy for president, we have decided we won't report on Trump's campaign as part of The Huffington Post's political coverage. Instead, we will cover his campaign as part of our Entertainment section. Our reason is simple: Trump's campaign is a sideshow. We won't take the bait. If you are interested in what The Donald has to say, you'll find it next to our stories on the Kardashians and The Bachelorette.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/a-note-about-our-coverage-of-donald-trumps-campaign_55a8fc9ce4b0896514d0fd66 This was a political decision by the higher-ups at HuffPo to tell the electorate how to view a candidate not as part of the editorial process, but as part of the news process. Because HuffPo News has become a powerful force in news coverage, this will have a ripple effect beyond HuffPo readership. Here's how HuffPo it pitching the story on its homepage:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 15, 2015 13 Comments
Obama has received justified criticism for not giving a statement about the killing of Kate Steinle in San Francisco by an illegal immigrant who had a long criminal record and had been deported five times. The silence stands in contrast to Obama issuing statements and otherwise commenting on the death of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and others. That criticism comes mostly from conservative media. The mainstream media has slightly touched the story, but nowhere near as extensively as other cases. Surely, with all the criticism, at least one reporter at today's press conference would have asked a question about Kate's murder. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/kate-steinle-killed-felon-san-francisco-laid-rest-article-1.2287802 The press conference primarily addressed the Iran nuclear deal, but other issues were raised towards the end, including prison reform, revoking Bill Cosby's Medal of Freedom, and Obama's upcoming trip to Kenya.

Posted by David Gerstman on July 15, 2015 13 Comments
President Obama defended his deal to Iran to Thomas Friedman of The New York Times yesterday. It was a bad deal and it represented a retreat on nearly every single element of the deal. In any case this is what Obama told Friedman:
“We are not measuring this deal by whether it is changing the regime inside of Iran,” said the president. “We’re not measuring this deal by whether we are solving every problem that can be traced back to Iran, whether we are eliminating all their nefarious activities around the globe. We are measuring this deal — and that was the original premise of this conversation, including by Prime Minister Netanyahu — Iran could not get a nuclear weapon. That was always the discussion. And what I’m going to be able to say, and I think we will be able to prove, is that this by a wide margin is the most definitive path by which Iran will not get a nuclear weapon, and we will be able to achieve that with the full cooperation of the world community and without having to engage in another war in the Middle East.”
And what about the opposition to the deal?

Posted by Mike LaChance on July 11, 2015 1 Comment
Ann Coulter's new book Adios, America! is currently number two on the New York Times bestsellers list. It is her eleventh book to reach such a distinction. She recently sat down for an interview with John Phillips of PJTV, and if you watch the video below, you'll hear Ann explain the book's success despite a blackout from many mainstream media outlets. Coulter speaks at length about immigration, legal and illegal, as a political issue and claims that American media has largely decided that the debate is settled and doesn't want people to even think about it. She points out how bad amnesty would be for the country and doesn't limit her criticism to Democrats. Fans of Marco Rubio should consider themselves warned.
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