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Media Bias Tag

Posted by David Gerstman on February 01, 2016 4 Comments
In the middle of January, I dissected Vox video purporting to distill the Arab-Israeli conflict into 10 minutes. But those ten  minutes were littered with countless errors and omissions. I wasn' t the only one weighing in, of course. Elder of Ziyon, one of the longest running pro-Israel bloggers has taken the criticism to a new level, in a video critique of the Vox video. This is no easy task - and I admire his patience and cool - as his critique of the first three minutes clocked in at 17 minutes. As Elder put it:
I'm not certain I will create parts 2 and 3, because I don't know who will want to spend maybe 45 minutes listening to a critique of a ten minute video. Literally every ten seconds I nI ceeded to stop to respond to another distortion or lie.
I certainly had that feeling reviewing the video:

Posted by Jonathan Levin on January 31, 2016 22 Comments
An eight-year Marine Corps veteran his wife have filed suit against their daughter’s high school principal, vice-principal, school district and board of education for violating her First Amendment rights by indoctrinating her in Islamic thought. The case filed in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland is captioned Wood v. Charles County Public Schools, et al. The Washington Free Beacon reports:
Their daughter and her fellow students were instructed to write out the Islamic creed “Shahada,” which says, “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.” When recited by non-Muslims, the creed amounts to conversion to Islam. Students were also required to memorize and recite the Five Pillars of Islam and were subjected to disparaging teachings about Christianity. “Most Muslims’ faith is stronger than the average Christian,” one worksheet read.

Posted by David Gerstman on January 21, 2016 10 Comments
Vox.com, which purports to "explain" things, has turned its attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The results are not pretty. Truth takes a backseat to revisionism and a combination of ignorance and propaganda forces out knowledge. Here's the video, but be sure to read the explanation below as to how it misleads: In general the content can be divided in two: anything that makes Israel look bad or the Palestinians sympathetic is described in (often incorrect) detail; anything that makes the Palestinians (or Arabs generally) look bad is described only generally. Israel is active; Palestinians are passive.

Posted by Jonathan Levin on January 19, 2016 11 Comments
Tea Party groups won a major victory last week, when Judge Susan J. Dlott of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio certified a class of Tea Party organizations that allege the IRS intentionally delayed their applications for preferential tax treatment based on their political viewpoints. Winning class certification in NorCal Tea Party Patriots v. Internal Revenue Service is a big deal, because it means the Court has already made several determinations, all of which favor the class.  The Court has determined that the number of Tea Party groups effected by the IRS's alleged behavior is so numerous that they can proceed together as a class.  The Court has also determined that all of the Tea Party groups have valid legal claims against the IRS which share common legal issues; in other words, that the IRS has treated them all the same way. Having survived the hazardous class certification step, the Plaintiffs will now get substantive discovery from the IRS and from third parties.  As the Washington Times summarized:

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on January 18, 2016 13 Comments
Last year, George Stephanopoulos had a particularly antagonistic interview with the author of Clinton Cash, and shortly thereafter, it was revealed that he had donated a substantial sum of money to the Clinton Foundation.  ABC stood by their man, though he did have to apologize on-air. The Washington Free Beacon is now reporting that Stephanopoulos has simply stopped disclosing his donations to the Clinton Foundation.
ABC news anchor George Stephanopoulos has stopped disclosing his donations to the Clinton Foundation prior to his interviews with presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Stephanopoulos interviewed Clinton twice over the past week, once Thursday morning on Good Morning America and again on Sunday’s This Week.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on January 13, 2016 78 Comments
It must be old campaign oppo dump day in America. Earlier today, an old, deceptively edited campaign ad from Marco Rubio's Senate run floated to the surface of the internet. This evening, the New York Times thinks they have a hot scoop with a story about Ted Cruz's Goldman Sachs loans. The New York Times is about four years late to the "exclusive" party though. Cruz's Goldman Sachs loans are old news. According to their 2012 personal filings, the Cruz's took loans from both Goldman Sachs and Citibank. His wife, Heidi Cruz, works for Goldman Sachs, but is currently on leave. These loans were not, however, disclosed in the FEC filings for Cruz's campaign, Ted Cruz for Senate Committee. First, the NYT story:

Posted by David Gerstman on January 07, 2016 23 Comments
At a time when tensions in the Middle East are rising, it is perhaps a time to once again review President Barack Obama's qualifications for office. To be sure his qualifications were fabricated, or at least oversold. This wasn't just the doing of the Obama campaign. Campaigns are supposed to do present their candidates in the best possible light. The problem  was that America's supposedly independent media boosted the first terms senator's prospects with little or no skepticism. This was certainly the case in reporting where most reporters bought into the historical aspect of Obama's candidacy as well was the rebuke to Republicans for the failings of the Bush presidency. (If not the failings, then the aspects that the liberal media disagreed with.) For the purpose of this exercise let's look at parts of The Washington Post's 2008 endorsement of Obama. I am using the Post as an example of what we saw so frequetly because even though the Post is a liberal paper, its editorial position regarding foreign policy is generally responsible. However in the Post's enthusiasm for Obama, all caution was disregarded and they promoted a man who did not really exist.

Posted by Jonathan Levin on January 04, 2016 0 Comments
CAMERA - the Committee for Accuracy in Middle-East Reporting in America - has released its Top Ten MidEast Media Mangles for 2015. There are some doozies, from all the usual sources: The New York Times, BBC, Washington Post, MSNBC, AP, The Guardian and Ha'aretz.  There's also the perennial phenomenon of media silence regarding Palestinian incitement that is the bedrock of the Israeli/Arab conflict.  In a first, Elle made the list as well (apparently terrorist chic is in style). CAMERA's full exposition is here, but in brief the top ten are:

1. Ignoring, absolving and questioning the spate of Palestinian knife terror attacks.

Posted by Mike LaChance on January 03, 2016 36 Comments
Protesters have taken over a small federal building in Oregon and some of them are armed. One of them is Ammon Bundy, son of rancher Cliven Bundy who was in the news last year for clashing with federal authorities over land use. The reason for the protest seems to be two-fold. The situation which set off the protest was the prosecution of a pair of father and son ranchers named Hammond. The Hammonds are not part of the protest however and are expected to surrender themselves to authorities Monday for separate charges. The second aspect of the protest is a grievance over the federal government taking over land that used to be owned by ranchers.

Posted by Jonathan Levin on December 27, 2015 32 Comments
The renewed attention on media bias since the Washington Post cartoon about Ted Cruz's children reminded me of Kyle Smith's December 14, 2015, review of Bridge of Lies in Commentary. Smith writes that Hollywood loves "based on a true story" scripts for their emotional draw and their putative lessons about our society.  But all too often those lessons really aren't what Leftist Hollywood wants them to be, so movie makers change the facts to comport with their view of the world. Smith describes how several Oscar-hopefuls amended reality to fit the liberal narrative.  Imitation Game is based on the life of Englishman Alan Turing, a genuine hero of the Western world whose decryption work at Bletchley Park was indispensable to winning WWII and the creation of the computer age.

Posted by David Gerstman on December 26, 2015 3 Comments
Anti-Israel bias in The New York Times isn't news. But an article this week once again highlights how the Times promotes those who criticize or demonize Israel pretty uncritically, Israeli Veterans’ Criticism of West Bank Occupation Incites Furor. The report in question was about the group Breaking the Silence, which the paper described as "a leftist organization of combat veterans that says it aims to expose the grim reality of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank." Of course that's not all, it also has brought up of accusations, often unsubstantiated, of IDF misconduct during war too. Still the story of Breaking the Silence is portrayed as a referendum on Israel and its morality. We read of the organization as being "at the center of a furor that is laying bare Israel’s divisions over its core values and the nature of its democracy," and "[highlighting] what it views as the corrosive nature of the occupation of the West Bank on Israeli society."

Posted by Jonathan Levin on December 24, 2015 10 Comments
It's a peculiar tradition.  As Christians prepare to celebrate Christmas, the media churns out articles blaming Israel for Christian struggles in the Holy Land. The Foundation for the Defense of Democracy's Cliff May wrote about the phenomenon in 2007:
In this holiday season, there are journalistic conventions one comes to expect: stories lamenting the commercialism of Christmas; stories summing up the 12 months gone by and predicting the direction of the New Year; and stories blaming Israelis for the problems afflicting the Holy Land.
Back then, May debunked accusations the Israel prevented Christians from visiting Bethlehem. This year, USA Today reports that the 2,000 year-old Christian community in Gaza is disappearing. Instead of looking to Hamas, the Islamist, Specially Designated Global Terrorist Organization that controls Gaza, writer Matthew Vickery (previously with al-Jazeera) blames "[t]he ongoing Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip and the highest unemployment rate in the world."

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 23, 2015 38 Comments
Washington Post cartoonist Ann Telnaes drew a cartoon showing Ted Cruz's children as monkeys dancing to his tune. The pretext was that the children appeared in a campaign ad. As if this is the first time children have appeared in a political context. There was a firestorm of controversy, and the cartoon was pulled: I have mixed feelings about the controversy. On the one hand, I'm against the culture of outrage that pervades campuses and increasingly the media. But I also understand why lines need to be drawn for candidates, particularly as to minor children.

Posted by Jonathan Levin on December 22, 2015 10 Comments
The Boycott, Divest & Sanction ("BDS") movement and the broader campaign to delegitimize Israel has had a tough few weeks.  In academia and industry, the boycott campaign has been exposed as potentially discriminatory and unlawful, and yet another panel of experts has affirmed that Israel's use of force against Hamas is not only legitimate, but exemplary. Law Professors Eugene Kontorovich and Steven Davidoff Solomon of the Northwestern University and University of California - Berkeley, respectively, make the case that boycotts by academic associations are unlawful.  As one might expect, academic associations each have a stated purpose, typically to collect, share, expand and advance knowledge in the relevant field.  Profs. Kontorovich and Davidoff explain that such associations cannot legally do anything other than pursue those stated purposes, and:
Boycott resolutions that are beyond the powers of an organization are void, and individual members can sue to have a court declare them invalid. The individuals serving on the boards of these organizations may be liable for damages. Consider the American Historical Association. Its constitution—a corporate charter—states that its purpose “shall be the promotion of historical studies” and the “broadening of historical knowledge among the general public.” There’s nothing in this charter that would authorize a boycott. And an anti-Israel boycott will do nothing to promote “historical studies” or broaden “historical knowledge.” A boycott by definition restricts study and research: The explanatory material attached to the [American Anthropological Association ("AAA")] resolution, for example, says it would restrict the organization from sharing scholarly journals with Israeli universities.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 14, 2015 25 Comments
I noted the other night that Donald Trump may have opened the "Overton Window" for Ted Cruz, by making Cruz acceptable to both Republican establishment types and general election voters who otherwise would have considered him Cruz conservative. I noted the fear of a liberal who wrote:
Donald Trump looks like the warm-up act. Whoever follows him from the Republican party looks reasonable (and sane) by comparison.
How will the mainstream media react if Cruz's current poll surge holds and he looks like a viable challenger to Trump? We know the answer, because there's a history here, one I documented back in August 2013. And ironically, it's a theme Trump appears to be taking up in a recent attack on Cruz. I called it the crazying of Ted Cruz, focusing on a Daily Beast article trying to portray Cruz as "creepy":
A lifetime of achievement that would normally be heralded by liberals if achieved by a liberal Hispanic, devolves into creepiness on the slimmest of pretexts. This is all part of the crazying of Ted Cruz by liberal publications like the Daily Beast. It doesn’t matter what the substance is, they just want to associate the word “creepy” with Ted Cruz in the minds of the public, many of whom don’t read past the headline.

Posted by Mike LaChance on December 14, 2015 23 Comments
Here's something you may have missed over the weekend. While most Americans are concerned about terrorism and the growth of ISIS, President Obama and other world leaders met in Paris to discuss climate change. When an agreement was reached, journalists reacted like excited teenage girls. T. Becket Adams of the Washington Examiner has the story:
Reporters shout, jump for joy after climate change agreement Journalists appeared to erupt in cheers Saturday afternoon after representatives from nearly 200 countries agreed to adopt the Paris Agreement, a major accord vowing to fight global warming.
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