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Media Bias Tag

Posted by Mike LaChance on April 16, 2015 18 Comments
MSNBC's Chris Matthews has never had much love for conservatives, but he's been on a roll lately. Here's what Matthews had to say about the current GOP field on his show yesterday. Ken Shepherd of News Busters:
Chris Matthews's 'Snake-Charmer' Dog Whistle?; Will Leftists Complain About Racist 'Microaggression'? MSNBC Hardball host Chris Matthews loves to slander Republicans as often speaking in code or blowing racial "dog-whistles." Of course, doing that should open him up to charges of the same when he speaks carelessly. Before I continue, I must add that I don't in any way think Matthews was making a veiled reference here to Republican Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's Indian ethnic heritage, but even so, given his network's political correctness, it seems pretty odd that Matthews feels comfortable comparing the GOP primary field to a Middle Eastern bazaar that's just missing its "snake charmer." Here's the relevant transcript:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 14, 2015 41 Comments
The Hillary Chipotle story is either one of the most amazing unintended earned-media campaign stories ever, or a contrived set up. Regardless, put points in Team Hillary column. Maggie Haberman at The NY Times broke the story about Hillary's supposedly secret trip to Chipotle on her Scooby trip to Iowa. The story goes like this:
Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign is all about “everyday Americans,” she made clear in announcing it on Sunday. On Monday, she showed how unassuming she herself could be. Driving to Iowa for her first campaign swing, Mrs. Clinton’s van — with two aides and Secret Service agents aboard — pulled into a Chipotle restaurant for lunch in Maumee, Ohio, a suburb of Toledo. And no one recognized her. Maybe it was the dark sunglasses. Or maybe she had a certain je ne sais — qui? But nobody took notice of the celebrity in front of the counter. Fellow patrons paid her no more attention than a driver would get from a toll taker. Nor did the restaurant’s staff notice Mrs. Clinton, until this reporter, tipped off that she had dined there, telephoned. The Chipotle manager, Charles Wright, insisted at first that the tip must have been false. But he offered to review his security-camera recordings, and quickly reversed himself. There was Mrs. Clinton, in a bright pink shirt, ordering a chicken burrito bowl — and carrying her own tray. “The thing is, she has these dark sunglasses on,” Mr. Wright said. “She just was another lady.”
Haberman explained in a different column:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 13, 2015 41 Comments
Yesterday we featured Carly Fiorina's instantaneous reaction to Hillary Clinton's announcement. Or should we say John Podesta's announcement followed up by Hillary. Fiorina exhibited what is becoming her trademark: Taking the fight right to Hillary Clinton's supposed strength, the gender card. Fiorina, as the only woman likely to become a Republican candidate for President, is uniquely able to make the argument that Hillary is abusing the gender card to cover up lack of actual accomplishment. It was only a matter of time before Fiorina's audaciousness would make her a target. So when I read Jazz Shaw's tweet that Mika Brzezinski on Morning Joe went after Fiorina, it didn't surprise me one bit. What's most important is not that she was attacked, but that she responded well: Here is the video:

Posted by Mike LaChance on April 12, 2015 12 Comments
John Dickerson of CBS News has been named to replace Bob Schieffer as the new host of Face the Nation. Hadas Gold of Politico:
CBS News political director John Dickerson has been named the next host of “Face the Nation,” host Bob Schieffer announced Sunday. Dickerson’s first turn in the anchor chair will take place this summer, when Schieffer retires after nearly five decades in journalism, more than two of them as host of the Sunday news show. “I couldn’t be happier,” Schieffer said on Sunday’s broadcast. “‘Face the Nation’ is going to be in good hands.” Dickerson’s connection to the show and network is deep: His mother, Nancy Dickerson, was the first female correspondent in the CBS News Washington bureau and an associate producer on “Face the Nation.” “I’m honored and really excited. Mom would’ve been excited too. She was an associate producer on this show on the very first airing on this broadcast,” Dickerson said.
Republican viewers are right to be concerned whether they can expect a fair shake from Dickerson. Ed Driscoll of PJ Media:
New Host of Face the Nation Advised Obama in 2013 to ‘Destroy the GOP’ John Dickerson, replacing Bob Schieffer as the new host of Face the Nation, will continue the same level of objectivity that CBS has brought to viewers for half a century. In 1964, when CBS was one third of all television news, Walter Cronkite and Daniel Schorr repeatedly smeared Barry Goldwater as a crypto-Nazi. His successor, Dan Rather, blew himself up in spectacular fashion with RatherGate in 2004, as dissected by all those bloggers in their Pajamas, to coin a Website name. In 2007, Rather’s successor, Scott Pelley, violating 32 flavors of Godwin’s Law in the same fashion as Cronkite, “was asked why he refused to include global warming skeptics in his reporting. He responded, ‘If I do an interview with [Holocaust survivor] Elie Wiesel, am I required as a journalist to find a Holocaust denier?’”, as NewsBusters noted.

Posted by Jay Caruso on April 10, 2015 18 Comments
ALEC, or the American Legislative Exchange Council is an organization that is described as such:
"...is a nonprofit organization of conservative state legislators and private sector representatives that drafts and shares model state-level legislation for distribution among state governments in the United States. According to its website, ALEC "works to advance the fundamental principles of free-market enterprise, limited government, and federalism at the state level through a nonpartisan public-private partnership of America's state legislators, members of the private sector and the general public".
To many Democrats and others on the left, however, ALEC is some kind of modern version of the Illuminati, secretly working to take over the United States, using the people within their organization to brainwash public officials into doing their bidding.

Posted by Mike LaChance on April 09, 2015 17 Comments
The Republican "War on Women" isn't over and if liberals have their way, it never will be. Newly announced presidential candidate Rand Paul appeared on the Today Show yesterday morning and had the nerve to push back when Savannah Guthrie put words in his mouth. Nick Gass of Politico:
Rand Paul clashes with Savannah Guthrie over changing views Sen. Rand Paul clashed with “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie over her line of questioning during an interview Wednesday morning, criticizing her for editorializing over perceived changes in his political views since his election to the Senate. “You have had views on foreign policy in the past that were somewhat unorthodox, but you seem to have changed over the years,” Guthrie told the Kentucky Republican, who was appearing via satellite from Nashua, New Hampshire. “You once said Iran was not a threat, now you say it is. You once proposed ending foreign aid to Israel, now you support it, at least for the time being, and you once offered to drastically cut … defense spending.” Paul attempted to speak as Guthrie continued.
MSNBC's Ed Schultz, who once referred to conservative talk radio host Laura Ingraham as a "right wing slut" is just beside himself over all this misogyny:

Posted by Mike LaChance on April 04, 2015 6 Comments
During a recent visit to New Hampshire, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker said that he bought a sweater at Kohl's department store for one dollar. Politifact felt it was necessary to make sure the story was true:
Gov. Scott Walker says he bought a sweater for $1 at Kohl's When Gov. Scott Walker took his presidential ambitions to New Hampshire, he shared a penny-pinching story that would have been right at home in bargain-hunting Wisconsin. At the center of the story: A new sweater, a dollar and Menomonee Falls-based Kohl’s. The department store chain is well known for its deep discounts -- ones so deep that the company has faced legal challenges over its pricing practices in Kansas, Massachusetts and California. At issue in the California case, for instance, was complaints that the retailer listed "normal" prices for products but never sold them for that price. Walker likes to point out that shortly after he was married, his wife, Tonette, was mortified because he didn’t know the drill at Kohl’s. In Concord, N.H., he told the crowd at a March 14, 2015 workshop about a "critical mistake" he made while shopping at a Kohl’s store... Now, we grant this is not the most important topic in politics today. But we decided to fact check it for two reasons. First, we heard from readers from around the country who thought it was an unbelievable story -- as in, literally impossible to believe. Second, it goes to what has been a major theme of Walker’s visits to some of the early primary states -- that he is just an average guy...

Posted by Andrew Branca on March 31, 2015 27 Comments
Is NBC up to its old—and I do mean old—tricks? Way back in the early 1990s the network’s “Dateline NBC” program ran a "news" story claiming that certain General Motors pickup trucks would explode in flames when involved in an accident. They demonstrated this propensity to their viewers by filming a controlled crash involving one of the GM trucks in question. Sure enough: kaboom! and fire! The only problem? The kabooming and fire were helped along by NBC’s surreptitious placement of incendiary devices hidden inside the vehicle. In February of 1993 the show’s hosts, Jane Pauly and Stone Phillips, would be forced to deliver a humiliating three and a half minute on-air apology to GM, as the network agreed to pay GM to settle a suit brought against NBC over the story. (LA Times: “NBC Admits It Rigged Crash, Settles GM Suit). Now claims are being made that NBC is using a similar dirty trick once again to falsely dramatize another explosive "news" story, this time on a different “news” show, the Today Show, and by a different “news" reporter, Jeff Rossen.

Posted by Mike LaChance on March 25, 2015 10 Comments
As you can probably imagine, Ted Cruz's announcement about his plans to run for president in 2016 brought out a whole new level of crazy from liberals in media and most of it was very ugly. The fine folks at Newsbusters have done a tremendous job chronicling the MSM reaction in words and video. Here are a few choice examples. From Jeffrey Meyer:
Donny Deutsch Attacks ‘Scary…Dangerous…Slimy’ Ted Cruz Appearing on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Monday, Donny Deutsch viciously attacked Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) following his announcement that he will be running for president, calling the Tea Party favorite “scary” and “dangerous.” After co-host Mika Brzezinski asked Erica Grieder of Texas Monthly about Cruz’s presidential prospects, Deutsch tore into the Republican senator and declared him “completely unelectable, obviously an interesting character and obviously he’ll have a place at the table but unelectable for a host of reasons.”
Here's the video: But wait, there's more....

Posted by David Gerstman on March 23, 2015 9 Comments
The nuclear negotiations between the West and Iran may have reached an impasse over the timing of Iran getting relief from sanctions. This is how The Guardian broke down the differences between the United States and the French on Friday:
Diplomats say the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, telephoned the French delegation in Lausanne to ensure it did not make further concessions, and to insist that the bulk of UN sanctions could only be lifted if Iran gave a full explanation of evidence suggesting it may have done development work on nuclear warhead design in the past.  ... The US offer on sanctions is to lift UN sanctions in layers in return each “irreversible” step Iran makes to scale down and limit its nuclear programme. There would be mechanisms in place by which sanctions would “spring back” if Iran violated the agreement, without the need for consensus in the UN security council. It is broadly supported by the UK and Germany, while Russia and China, the other members of the six-nation group, would offer more generous terms. Tehran is reluctant to accept sanctions relief based on milestones, but diplomats say the French position would be a complete deal-breaker. They say the Iranians would be very unlikely to admit past weapons work, which if revealed would demonstrate that the country’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, had misled the world. Better, US diplomats argue, to focus on limiting the current Iranian programme and worry about allegations about the past a few years down the road.
Focus on the current issues and leave the allegations for the future? Are they crazy? Let's take a couple of paragraphs from United Nations Security Council Resolution 1696, which was passed in July 2006 and was the first of six resolutions passed against Iran for its violations of the Nuclear Nonproliferation treaty.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on March 16, 2015 13 Comments
Yes, we have to do this... again. Perpetual media malpractice requires searchable rebuttals to even the dumbest of mistruths, like the latest one about Ted Cruz. Speaking to the Strafford County Republican Committee in New Hampshire yesterday, Cruz was critical of the administration saying, "the Obama-Clinton foreign policy of leading from behind... the whole world's on fire!" (managing to slide in a not so subtle Clinton dig). A little girl named Julia Trant was supposedly frightened by Cruz's statement and asked mid-speech, "The world is on fire?!" according to Adam Smith, political editor for the Tampa Bay Times, who attended the event. Senator Cruz took a moment from his speech to assure the little girl that Mommy was taking care of everything, "the world is on fire, yes! Your world is on fire. But you know what? Your mommy's here and everyone's here to make sure that the world you grow up in is even better." Ted Cruz has two young daughters of his own. The video was posted by Raw Story with the headline, "Ted Cruz scares the hell out of a terrified little girl in New Hampshire." CNN, New York Magazine, Bloomberg, Gawker, Salon and others had similar headlines. Ed Kilgore of Washington Monthly mused that Cruz was using coded language and really meant Obama is the anti-christ or at the very least, one of his minions. Because referencing a "world on fire" is clearly an anti-christ dog whistle. Yes, seriously.

Posted by Mike LaChance on March 15, 2015 7 Comments
As we recently noted, every problem for Democrats is ultimately spun as the fault of Republicans and Obama's policy on Iran is no exception. The panel on today's edition of Face the Nation began laying the groundwork for talking points which will soon become all too familiar. Ryan Lovelace of National Review:
CBS Panel Is Ready to Blame GOP Sen. Tom Cotton If Obama’s Foreign Policy Toward Iran Fails The panel on CBS’ Face the Nation appears ready to blame Arkansas senator Tom Cotton if the Obama administration’s negotiations with Iran fall through. Cotton, along with 46 other Senators, penned a letter warning the Iranian regime not to rely on any agreement with President Obama that did not have the approval of Congress. “Yes, Cotton is well intentioned in doing this, but it’s backfiring,” said Dana Milbank of the Washington Post. “If the Ayatollah is going to give out the Ayatollah’s Medal of Honor this year, I think Cotton’s going to be a finalist because it gives them an excuse if they pull away from the agreement now.”
Watch the exchange below:

Posted by David Gerstman on March 12, 2015 3 Comments
In a lengthy report, investigative journalists Richard Behar and Gary Weiss exposed the various ways that the Associated Press (AP) discounted Israeli claims and promoted Hamas propaganda in its investigation last month into civilian casualties that occurred during last summer's Operation Protective Edge. Among the sins and omissions documented by Behar and Weiss are (1) misidentifying terrorists, (2) using children as props, (3) failing to acknowledge that pictures are posed, (4) cherry-picking quotes from Israeli officials, and (5) failing to disclose the anti-Israel bias of their sources. One incident recounted by Behar and Weiss involves the interactions between Reuven Ehrlich and an AP reporter; Ehrlich is the head of the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC). Following Operation Protective Edge, ITIC carefully reviewed martyr claims made by Gaza-based terrorist organizations in order to identify which of the dead were terrorists and which were civilians. ITIC also kept a count of those whose status was unknown.
A few days before the AP article was published, one of its reporters, Karin Laub, telephoned Mr. Erlich of the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, which has documented in several of its own probes that the Hamas-generated numbers for Gaza civilian casualties are grossly inflated. The organization found that Hamas is obfuscating the actual lists and affiliations, partly because of objective technical difficulties (poor paperwork and a lack of access to some bodies), and as part of its propaganda campaign against Israel. Thus, Meir Amit’s experts are closely examining the deaths, one by one, and its final tally won’t be available for many months—if not years. For now, the ratio of civilian-to-terrorist deaths has been averaging roughly 1:1 in its reports.

Posted by New Neo on March 12, 2015 49 Comments
I had thought that the press would stand by Hillary Clinton in the same way they've stood by Obama---through thick and thin. After all, Obama has committed acts far worse than Hillary's, has covered up more, and has been just as egregious in his lies. And yet I can't recall Obama having been subjected to questions even remotely as difficult as the ones Hillary faced (and answered poorly) this week, although the press could have grilled him that way any time he appeared before them. They chose not to do that, but they chose to ask some real questions of Hillary Clinton. Why the differential treatment? As soon as the email story broke, the NY Times led the attack. Originally it seemed that they may have wanted to get it over with in a perfunctory way and then let her candidacy continue, or that this was being done at the direction of Obama who wanted another candidate for various reasons. But now I've come to think that the first reason isn't operative (at least, not any more), and that although the second may be true, it doesn't account for the fervor of the criticism. Perhaps part of the reason this thing has gotten bigger is that Clinton has handled it poorly. Perhaps the MSM is piling on because they thought Hillary would be better at dealing with it than she has demonstrated so far, and they're panicking because her performance means she will be a bad candidate come 2016. Or perhaps they know of other scandals, and they want her out before the revelations multiply (and end up reflecting poorly on their favorite, Obama, or on liberalism itself?) If they can't put out this fire they may want to fan the flames so that the sacrifice happens more quickly and a new and more viable candidate is chosen, and they can get credit for "objectivity" (for hurting one of their own) into the bargain.

Posted by Amy Miller on March 04, 2015 38 Comments
In case you missed it, yesterday Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a speech before Congress eviscerating Obama's policy toward Iran and triggering a complete meltdown amongst Democrats and liberal talking heads. I included the rail-jumping from MSNBC institution Chris Matthews in a previous post, but something he said during his rant has been nagging at me ever since I blew it off and hit "publish":
Speaking to Thomas Roberts shortly after Netanyahu’s speech ended, Matthews said definitively, “This man from a foreign government walked into the United States legislative chamber and tried to take over foreign policy.” “He said you should trust me, not your president on this,” Matthews continued, describing the tone of Netanyahu’s remarks. “I’m the man you should trust, I’m your true leader on this question of U.S. geopolitics. If you want to protect yourself, you must listen to me and not this president.” Calling the situation “startling,” Matthews said, “It’s a remarkable day when the leaders of the opposition in Congress allowed this to happen. Think it through, what country in the world would let a foreign leader come in and attempt to rest from the president control of U.S. foreign policy?” “This was a takeover attempt by Netanyahu with his complying American partners to take American foreign policy out of the hands of the president,” he concluded.
Watch:

Posted by David Gerstman on March 01, 2015 28 Comments
The administration continues in its attempt to marginalize Prime Minister Netanyahu ahead of his speech on Iran. And the efforts appear to be backfiring. Jeffrey Goldberg tells some important truths in today's column, Danger Ahead for Obama on Iran:
I’m fairly sure Netanyahu will deliver a powerful speech, in part because he is eloquent in English and forceful in presentation. But there is another reason this speech may be strong: Netanyahu has a credible case to make. Any nuclear agreement that allows Iran to maintain a native uranium-enrichment capability is a dicey proposition; in fact, any agreement at all with an empire-building, Assad-sponsoring, Yemen-conquering, Israel-loathing, theocratic terror regime is a dicey proposition. The deal that seems to be taking shape right now does not fill me—or many others who support a diplomatic solution to this crisis—with confidence. Reports suggest that the prospective agreement will legitimate Iran’s right to enrich uranium (a “right” that doesn’t actually exist in international law); it will allow Iran to maintain many thousands of operating centrifuges; and it will lapse after 10 or 15 years, at which point Iran would theoretically be free to go nuclear. (The matter of the sunset clause worries me, but I’m more worried that the Iranians will find a way to cheat their way out of the agreement even before the sun is scheduled to set.) ... This is a very dangerous moment for Obama and for the world. He has made many promises, and if he fails to keep them—if he inadvertently (or, God forbid, advertently) sets Iran on the path to the nuclear threshold, he will be forever remembered as the president who sparked a nuclear-arms race in the world’s most volatile region, and for breaking a decades-old promise to Israel that the United States would defend its existence and viability as the nation-state of the Jewish people.
And as Goldberg noted, three years ago Obama promised in one of Goldberg's columns, “We’ve got Israel’s back.”

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 28, 2015 24 Comments
Gawker Media website Deadspin helped Cory Gardner win the Colorado Senate race, and contributed to Republicans taking the Senate, by botching a gotcha story about Garnder supposedly faking his high school football record. Deadspin was dead wrong, and we said Thanks Deadspin! Now Gawker Media website Jezebel has done the equivalent for Scott Walker. "Senior Reporter" (what could that possible mean at Jezebel?) Natasha Vargas-Cooper thought she had a big, BIG scoop that proved Walker hated women, or something. You see, Walker supposedly didn't want sexual assault statistics reported by the University of Wisconsin because budget cuts would defund such reporting: Jezebel Scott Walker Sexual Assault Reporting Original It was the perfect WAR ON WOMEN narrative. But Vargas-Cooper didn't know the full story, perhaps because she was too busy dancing on Walker's political grave. The Daily Beast then picked up the story, and Scott Walker supposedly hating women spread like wildfire. Turns out the reporting cut was requested by the University of Wisconsin itself because it was redundant of federal reporting it already did -- why spend the money to report the same thing twice? And the world came crashing down on Jezebel and Vargas-Cooper, but she stood strong in the face of the patriarchy:

Posted by David Gerstman on February 22, 2015 13 Comments
An effort last week to marshal Congressional Democrats to urge House Speaker John Boehner to delay Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Congressional speech next month gained the support of only 23 out of 188 House Democrats. There is more than one way to explain this. Here's administration defender Greg Sargent of The Washington Post.
Some House Democrats have circulated a letter calling on House Speaker John Boehner to delay the speech, on the grounds that it represents a partisan effort by Republicans to enlist the help of a foreign leader in scuttling one of the President’s chief foreign policy goals, i.e., reaching a nuclear deal with Iran, which Netanyahu bitterly opposes. ... All in all, the failure of more Democrats to sign this letter suggests many still fear the politics of appearing out of sync with whatever Israel wants. It’s true that a number of Democrats have said they will skip the speech. But many of those have clarified that this isn’t due to any organized boycott, and far more are attending. And, really, all the talk of a “boycott” is misdirection. It shouldn’t be all that difficult for Democrats to call for a mere delay in this speech, while rebuffing efforts to portray such a move as “anti-Israel,” given how egregious the circumstances surrounding this event really are.
(It's important to note that Sargent quotes a poll showing that most Americans are unhappy with the way the invitation was extended - i.e. dissatisfaction with Boehner's actions, other polls show strong American support for Netanyahu speaking.) Not surprisingly Sargent uses his cherry-picked data point to point out the the big bad Israel lobby as the culprit.(In blaming the pro-Israel lobby, Sargent took a page from the playbook of President Obama who, last month, according to The New York Times, effectively accused Sen. Robert Menendez of not loving his country enough, "The president said he understood the pressures that senators face from donors and others, but he urged the lawmakers to take the long view rather than make a move for short-term political gain, according to the senator.")
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