Media Bias | Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion - Part 61
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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.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on July 10, 2015 11 Comments
Friday, Office of Personnel Management Director Katherine Archuleta resigned from her post. Her resignation comes after weeks of Congressional hearings over the massive data breach that exposed the personal information (including social security numbers) of more than 21 million people at last count. Archuleta went to the White House where she resigned in person, according to the New York Times. The NYT also reported the deputy director of management at the Office of Management and Budget, Beth Cobert will step in to temporarily. As recently as a few weeks ago, Archuleta was blaming the massive hack attack on "legacy systems." Forbes reported:
Amidst the fallout and despite calls for her resignation, OPM Director Katherine Archuleta claimed Tuesday that no one was “personally responsible” for the OPM breach at a Senate hearing of the Financial Services and General Government subcommittee. “This is decades of lack of investments in the systems we inherited. We have legacy systems that are very old. If there’s anyone to blame, it’s the perpetrators,” Archuleta said. “I don’t believe anyone is personally responsible for OPM breach. I’m angry that this has happened to OPM, and I’m moving as quickly as I can to protect OPM systems.”

Posted by Jay Caruso on July 09, 2015 31 Comments
The term "liberal media" is one that kind of makes people raise an eyebrow as it is often seen as too generic an attack on the media. That said, it is hard to argue that some bias in the media does not exist that tilts towards Democrats. Look at almost any survey and you'll find the overwhelming majority of journalists vote Democrat and some of that bias is going to work its way into their reporting whether they want to admit it or not. Bias can come in two forms: How something is covered and whether or not it is covered at all. Then there are times when the press just goes off the reservation and their fawning coverage of President Obama is just blatant. Following the horrific shooting of nine people by Dylann Roof, President Obama was invited to Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, to delivery the eulogy for Rev. Clementa Pinckney, one of the nine victims and also one of the pastors of the church. The President, never one to miss a chance to make something political, spoke of gun control but also delivered a stirring tribute to Pinckney, who not only served people at the church, but also as a state legislator. It was at the end of the eulogy that President Obama did something that some described as "one of the most powerful moments in Presidential history." He launched into the song, 'Amazing Grace', one of the most beautiful hymns ever written. Twitter went haywire with a ton of tweets punctuated with "Wow" at the wonder of the moment.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 08, 2015 2 Comments
On June 12, 2014, three Israeli teens were kidnapped and murdered in the West Bank by a Hamas-affiliated group. The bodies would be found on June 30. During June, an intensive search was conducted for the teens and the murderers, including the arrest of many Hamas members in the West Bank and a crackdown on its operations. Militants in Gaza fired a total of 62 rockets into Israel during June (even before the kidnapping), and Israel retaliated by targeting rocket crews and militants in Gaza:
On June 30, 2014, 16 rockets were fired into Israel by Hamas, leading to more Israeli targeting and a massive Hamas rocket offensive. Hamas or other militants fired over a dozen rockets a day the first few days of July, and then on July 7 as Israel retaliated with airstrikes, the daily count grew to 80 rockets on July 7 and 156 on July 8.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 07, 2015 4 Comments
This week the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and its supporters will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of the supposedly grassroots launch of the BDS movement by Palestinian "civil society" organizations. The Associated Press, through its writer Tia Goldenberg, has a lengthy article on the BDS movement. The article is receiving a lot of attention, including a Drudge link, and because it is AP is being reprinted (under varying titles) at numerous news website. The article starts with BDS's supposed grassroots beginnings, Boycott Israel drive gains strength, raising alarm:
Ten years ago, a small group of Palestinian activists had a novel idea: inspired by the anti-apartheid movement, they called for a global boycott movement against Israel as a nonviolent method to promote the Palestinian struggle for independence.
That narrative of how the BDS movement began is false, and demonstrably so. The boycott call issued in July 2005 was not the result of a small group of activists getting together, it was the result of a multi-year organized effort for a global boycott of Israel, most prominently in a boycott call issued at the 2001 UN Durban Conference which was so anti-Semitic the U.S. walked out. We have explored this history many times at Legal Insurrection. Here is the actual history of the BDS movement:

Posted by Mike LaChance on July 07, 2015 20 Comments
Media bias is no longer a problem perceived only by conservative bloggers. A Gallup poll last fall found 60% didn't trust mass media but a new survey from USA Today and the Newseum Institute finds that 70% of Americans believe the media is biased. Clearly, the scandals of Brian Williams and George Stephanopolous played a role. Bradford Thomas of Truth Revolt:
Media Fail: 70% Believe News Reporting Intentionally Biased A new survey by USA Today and the First Amendment Center found that Americans' distrust of the news media has skyrocketed over the last year, the number of American adults believing news reporting is biased jumping up to 70 percent, while less than a quarter now say they trust the news media. The 2015 State of the First Amendment Survey released Friday found that only 24 percent of American adults believe that "overall, the news media tries to report the news without bias," a 17-point drop from last year and the lowest number since the poll began in 2004. More than two-thirds, 70 percent, disagreed with that statement, a 15-point increase since last year.
One positive finding in the survey was an increase in support for the First Amendment.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on July 07, 2015 26 Comments
Somewhat overshadowed by the Independence Day holiday weekend, Rick Perry's unorthodox jobs and economic growth speech ruffled all the right feathers. Candidate job plans tend to blur together because regardless of party affiliation, they're virtually indistinguishable. Reduce/raise taxes, decrease/increase regulation, "get America working again!", "yada yada yada middle class!" Then there's always "something strangling something." Whether it's speech writer laziness or well tested imagery I don't know, but there's always something being strangled. "Bring jobs back to America!" [insert story of someone candidate met while campaigning and how current administration/elected official's policies have made it hard for anecdotal individual to find work] and so on. And that's pretty much every single economic policy speech in modern history. Or at least it was until last Thursday. Perry's economic opportunity speech at the National Press Club last week was unlike any other speech of its kind and brilliantly so.

Posted by Amy Miller on July 06, 2015 12 Comments
Earlier this month, the EPA lost big when the Supreme Court ruled that the agency had erred during implementation of new regulations governing coal-fired power plants. That blow came on the heels of Congressional action against the EPA's new "Waters of the United States" rule, which opponents rightly argue amounts to little more than a power grab legitimized under the trappings of "environmentalism." It's an agency under fire; and while it may not be teetering on the verge of total self-destruction, evidence released today suggests that the EPA may be more nervous than they'd like to admit about maintaining a hold on private enterprise. E-mails obtained from the EPA via a FOIA request submitted by the Environment & Energy (E&E) Legal Institute show that agency officials used talking points provided by a left-wing special interest group to sway prominent journalists covering controversial new power plant regulations. From Lachlan Markay at the Washington Free Beacon:

Posted by Mike LaChance on July 05, 2015 14 Comments
Remember when Scott Brown was chastised for questioning another type of Indian candidate? He was uniformly raked over the coals by the media. When the candidate is a Republican however, their ethnicity and race are considered worthy of attack. Case in point, Annie Gowen of the Washington Post:
From Piyush to Bobby: How does Jindal feel about his family’s past? Jindal’s status as a conservative of color helped propel his meteoric rise in the Republican Party — from an early post in the George W. Bush administration to two terms in Congress and now a second term as Louisiana governor — and donors from Indian American groups fueled his first forays into politics. Yet many see him as a man who has spent a lifetime distancing himself from his Indian roots. As a child, he announced he wanted to go by the name Bobby, after a character in “The Brady Bunch.” He converted from Hinduism to Christianity as a teen and was later baptized a Catholic as a student at Brown University — making his devotion to Christianity a centerpiece of his public life. He and his wife were quick to say in a “60 Minutes” interview in 2009 that they do not observe many Indian traditions — although they had two wedding ceremonies, one Hindu and one Catholic. He said recently that he wants to be known simply as an American, not an Indian American. “There’s not much Indian left in Bobby Jindal,” said Pearson Cross, a political science professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette who is writing a book on the governor.

Posted by Jay Caruso on July 01, 2015 11 Comments
When a 2 or 3 year old is caught doing something wrong, they often react with complete shock they did something wrong. They genuinely believe whatever it is they were doing was perfectly fine and cannot comprehend why they're being scolded. The media is often like that of a small child. A toddler. At the start of June, the NY Times and Washington Post weighed in with articles about Marco Rubio's finances. The headline at the NY Times read, "Marco Rubio’s Career Bedeviled by Financial Struggles." Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post quipped, "Here’s the real issue with Marco Rubio’s finances" and wrote:
That's all totally fine. If Rubio wants a boat, he can buy a boat. The issue for Rubio is that he is investing so much of his appeal on his "I have lived the American Dream" story that he necessarily has to accept that that story will be inspected closely to see what it tells us about him and how he might run the government if he is entrusted with doing so.

Posted by Amy Miller on June 29, 2015 21 Comments
Defenders of the Confederate Flag, prepare to feel really, really uncomfortable---you have an unlikely ally(ish). MSNBC's Ed Schultz is a dependable progressive shill. When Republicans retook the Senate last year, he was apoplectic; when he encounters right wing opposition, he blatantly shuts it down. All in all, he's a belligerent with a bullhorn; but this past week he accidentally made a little bit of sense when he weighed in on the Confederate Flag debate. Addressing the breathless purge of the "stars and bars," he said that "[t]he desecration of our nation's history, I think, is dangerous and I think it's unproductive." Listen: Newsbusters has the transcript:
You know, I understand the effort to remove the Confederate flag from state capitols in the South and anywhere else in this country. There's no doubt about it that it sends the wrong message. But at this point, I asked the question, is it overboard? And I don't understand the attempt to erase American history as if it's going to change our course as a nation. It's not.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 29, 2015 10 Comments
At least no one got hurt this time. But Gaza Flotilla III was a complete flop. Meant to break Israel's perfectly legal naval blockade of Gaza (more on legality here), designed to stop Iranian shipments of weapons, the flotilla avoided the disaster of Gaza Flotilla I, in which 9 people were killed when they attacked Israeli commandos boarding a ship. This time, when it appeared Israel would prevent the flotilla from getting to Gaza, three of the boats called it off. The main boat, from Sweden but bearing an Israeli Arab lawmaker and the former President of Tunisia, proceeded, and was boarded by Israeli commandos.
The IDF posted the following announcement:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 27, 2015 49 Comments
Today, The NY Times turned its entire front page above the fold to celebrating yesterday's Supreme Court decision on gay marriage: NY Times Supreme Court Gay Marriage Headline Front Page Many national and major regional papers did the same. But is any diversity of news coverage permitted on such a huge cultural victory? If you want to know what the future of the post-SCOTUS SSM culture war looks like, take a look at this tweet by former MSM exec. Betsy Fischer Martin (h/t @bryanjacoutot) complaining that a north Louisiana paper had a larger headline about a local pageant than the Supreme Court's gay marriage decision. The Supreme Court decision was front page, above the fold, right hand side, double column, and was followed just below it with another report about the impact of the decision. But that a local pageant story had more column space apparently was unacceptable:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on June 24, 2015 32 Comments
Ah yes, the media and gun control. Senator Cruz joined PBS host Tavis Smiley Tuesday. Smiley seized the opportunity to peg Sen. Cruz on gun control. "To me and to others who've seen this, it seemed in bad taste, but maybe that's my assessment," Smiley said. "We all know what happened in Charleston the other day, and you were on the campaign trail after this happened, here's what you said on the campaign trail." Smiley then showed Sen. Cruz a clip bearing a HuffPo watermark, dated June 19 when Cruz was addressing a crowd in Iowa. "We need a second amendment, the right to keep and bear arms. You know the great thing about the state of Iowa, I'm pretty sure y'all define 'gun control' the same way we do in Texas -- hittin' what you aim at," Cruz explained as the audience chuckled. "Gun control is hitting what you aim at. Those comments were made after this tragedy the other day in South Carolina the other day, was that in bad taste?" Smiley asked.

Posted by Amy Miller on June 20, 2015 31 Comments
This week's attack on a historical black church in Charleston has sent the liberal political and media classes into a political feeding frenzy. The families of the dead, by contrast, has defied the odds embraced love and forgiveness. Here are five examples how some people sought to exploit the murders for political gain:

1. When in doubt, blame Fox News

The left has always had an abusive relationship with the journalists at Fox News, and never waits long before trying to tie the latest domestic tragedy to the "hate filled rhetoric" "spewing" from the conservative network. South Carolina Democratic Representative Todd Rutherford all but blamed the Charleston massacre on "things like Fox News," and when confronted by Bill O'Reilly, doubled down. Watch: Newsbusters has the breakdown: