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Media Bias Tag

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 05, 2015 23 Comments
From Politico, Dan Rather backs Brian Williams:
Brian Williams is "an honest, decent man, an excellent reporter and anchor--and a brave one," veteran newsman Dan Rather told POLITICO on Thursday. Rather's note of support comes after the revelation that Williams falsely claimed to have been aboard a helicopter that was shot down during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Williams admitted Wednesday that he was on a different helicopter, and apologized to viewers and crew members of the 159th Aviation Regiment. Like Williams, Rather has been the subject of public controversy. In 2004, he was forced to retract a report on George W. Bush's National Guard service after the authenticity of his source documents were called into question. Rather retired from CBS News the following year, ending a 24-year run as anchor of the Evening News. He now anchors "Dan Rather Reports" on the cable channel AXS.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on February 04, 2015 41 Comments
It certainly looks that way. NBC News Anchor Brian Williams has long claimed he was on a helicopter forced down by RPG fire while reporting from Iraq in 2003. An exclusive report in Stars and Stripes, a military publication, tells the story of Williams' indiscretion. Williams was forced to recant when a soldier protested Williams' rendition of the story. As recently as Monday, Williams claimed, on national news, that he was under fire on a Chinook. Take a look: It was during this commemoration that those involved in the incident stepped up to correct the record:

Posted by Amy Miller on February 02, 2015 9 Comments
Yesterday was Andrew Breitbart's birthday. It's amazing to me to see how that man's legacy has lived on, even as the conservative movement has changed so much over the past few years. I listen to the stories and wild career paths of activists and bloggers who were inspired by him, and I can't help but wonder where we would all be had Andrew not made the conscious decision to be brave in the face of what sometimes seems like insurmountable bias and recriminations from the media and the institutional left. I wrote yesterday about Scott Walker's ridiculous interview with Martha Raddatz, and while I was writing, I slid down the 2008/2012 rabbit hole remembering the disparate treatment of the conservative candidates who dared to challenge Barack Obama and paid for it with chunks of their reputations. Obviously, we're in for more of the same as the race to 2016 heats up, and it's important to remember that the same sort of bias we saw in previous cycles has already begun. Walker's Radditz-ing was just the start. Progressives are freaking out over his breakout performance---wasn't he supposed to be the boring midwestern governor that would never break out of the middle of the pack? But strong candidates like Walker, and creative firebrands like Rand Paul, are already causing trouble for an increasingly desperate Democrat narrative.

Posted by Amy Miller on January 02, 2015 12 Comments
There are some narratives that not even MSNBC should be expected to screw up---and yet, here we are. Today, Tamron Hall hosted former New Mexico Governor and UN Ambassador Bill Richardson to talk about Kim Jong Un's barely-precedented call for a summit between between the leadership of North Korea and South Korea. Throughout the interview, Richardson did a good job of pointing out how erratic the actions of North Korean regime has been, and was quick to put a damper on hopeful expectations that this proposed summit could mean a change in how the divided countries interact with one another. Then, of course, whatever is in the water over at MSNBC's studios seeped in to Richardson's consciousness and took the wheel. When asked about the possibility of Kim Jung Un wanting to define himself as a leader, Richardson went off the rails and blamed the media for North Korea's problems: Politico has the money quote:
“He has been the victim, Kim Jong Un, of a lot of bad press, a lot of bad international attention, with the Sony hacking, with [being] taken to the International Criminal Court by some U.N. countries, a number of other very destabilizing moves that he has made, shooting the missiles, nuclear testing,” Richardson said on Friday on MSNBC’s “News Nation with Tamron Hall.”
Watch it here:

Posted by David Gerstman on January 01, 2015 3 Comments
Today the New York Times, predictably, blamed Israel for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' efforts to internationalize the Palestinians conflict with Israel. According to the Times, it is Israel's fault that Abbas attempted to get the United Nations Security Council to impose an agreement on Israel and, failing that, to apply to join the International Criminal Court (ICC). In an editorial today, The Palestinians' Desperation Move, the Times argues:
Mr. Abbas began this week by insisting that the Security Council approve a resolution to set a deadline for establishing a Palestinian state, including the phased withdrawal of Israeli forces from the West Bank by the end of 2017. After heavy lobbying by the United States and Israel, the resolution received only eight of the nine votes needed to pass in the 15-member council. The fact is, the United States, which voted against the measure, supports a Palestinian state. And France, which broke with the Americans and voted in favor, acknowledged reservations about some of the details. Following this defeat, Mr. Abbas moved swiftly on Wednesday to take an even more provocative step in joining the International Criminal Court, through which the Palestinians could bring charges against Israeli officials for cases against their settlement activities and military operations. While he was under strong pressure from his constituents to do this, he knew well the cost might be great. “There is aggression practiced against our land and our country, and the Security Council has let us down — where shall we go?” Mr. Abbas said at his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Note that the Times describes these moves not as wrong, but as counterproductive.

Posted by David Gerstman on December 26, 2014 3 Comments
Prof. Jaccobson blogged yesterday about the tribulations of Israeli Member of Knesset Haneen Zoabi, who is privileged and free to serve in the legislature of the country that she reviles. But there's another Zoabi, in fact a distant cousin, who also has been in the news. Mohammad Zoabi. He's a teenager who describes himself as a "A Proud Israeli Arab Muslim Zionist." Mohammad first came to my attention when he released the video below, a plea to return Eyal Yifrach, Gil-ad Shaar and Naftali Fraenkel, in English, Hebrew and Arabic.

Posted by David Gerstman on December 24, 2014 1 Comment
In his column yesterday, anti-Israel columnist Roger Cohen of The New York Times talked to Tzipi Livni, candidate for prime minister and Israel's peace negotiator, about why the John Kerry-sponsored peace talks failed earlier this year. Livni tells of the three ways the Palestinians destroyed the peace talks. The administration in March had presented a framework for both sides.
Livni considered it a fair framework, and Netanyahu had indicated willingness to proceed on the basis of it while saying he had reservations. But Abbas declined to give an answer in what his senior negotiator, Saeb Erekat, later described as a “difficult” meeting with Obama. Abbas remained evasive on the framework, which was never made public.
One part of the framework was to accept the 1967 lines (really the 1948 armistice lines) as the basis of negotiations. In other words, Netanyahu made a major concession here and Abbas still refused to play ball. Still at the behest of the administration talks continued and a few weeks later, the Palestinians were at it again.
Then, Livni said, she looked up at a television as she awaited a cabinet meeting and saw Abbas signing letters as part of a process to join 15 international agencies — something he had said he would not do before the deadline.
Abbas offered the excuse that Israel was stalling. Still, this was a unilateral action outside the framework of negotiations and a broken promise. Finally, there was this:

Posted by Amy Miller on December 15, 2014 7 Comments
The campaign finance provision of the #CRomnibus spending bill has refocused bipartisan ire on the scourge of "money in politics," and has renewed progressive mouth-foaming over the allegedly infamous influence of the Koch brothers on the rise of conservative politics in America. Barbara Walters has included billionaire David Koch in her list of 2014's "Most Fascinating People," and in a recent interview held Koch's feet to the fire over his support for conservative candidates who don't subscribe to his admittedly socially liberal views on issues like abortion and gay marriage. Mediaite has the video:
Koch told Walters he was a fiscal conservative but social liberal. Walters pointed out that the candidates he funded were staunchly opposed to positions he supported, such as the legalization of gay marriage and a right to choose. “That’s their problem,” Koch replied. “What I want these candidates to do is support a balanced budget. I’m very worried that if the budget is not balanced inflation could occur and the economy of the country could suffer mightily.”
Watch:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on December 10, 2014 74 Comments
Had I not known Tomasky's piece in The Daily Beast was not in fact, parody, I'd have thought I was reading something straight from the annals of The Onion. Bereaved over Mary Landrieu's Louisiana Senate loss to Senator-elect Cassidy, Tomasky made the case (and I use that term loosely), that the Democrats should ditch Dixie (emphasis added to highlight adventitious hilarity):
I don’t remember a much sadder sight in domestic politics in my lifetime than that of Mary Landrieu schlumpfing around these last few weeks trying to save a Senate seat that was obviously lost. It was like witnessing the last two weeks of the life of a blind and toothless dog you knew the vet was just itching to destroy. I know that sounds mean about her, but I don’t intend it that way. She did what she could and had, as far as I know, an honorable career. I do, however, intend it to sound mean about the reactionary, prejudice-infested place she comes from. A toothless dog is a figure of sympathy. A vet who takes pleasure in gassing it is not. And that is what Louisiana, and almost the entire South, has become. The victims of the particular form of euthanasia it enforces with such glee are tolerance, compassion, civic decency, trans-racial community, the crucial secular values on which this country was founded… I could keep this list going. But I think you get the idea. Practically the whole region has rejected nearly everything that’s good about this country and has become just one big nuclear waste site of choleric, and extremely racialized, resentment. A fact made even sadder because on the whole they’re such nice people! (I truly mean that.) With Landrieu’s departure, the Democrats will have no more senators from the Deep South, and I say good. Forget about it. Forget about the whole fetid place. Write it off. Let the GOP have it and run it and turn it into Free-Market Jesus Paradise. The Democrats don’t need it anyway.
Gee, what electoral use could Democrats possible have for Florida, or Texas, or Virginia?

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on December 05, 2014 26 Comments
We've been skeptical of Rolling Stone's recent and controversial story about a coed simply referred to as 'Jackie' who claimed to have been brutally gang raped at a University of Virginia frat party in 2012. Sabrina Ruben Erdely, the Rolling Stone reporter covering the UVA gang rape story, failed to contact the alleged attackers and corroborate Jackie's story. Any 'new information' Rolling Stone is referring to is simply the product of basic journalistic due diligence. In a reactionary response, and without first conducting an investigation of their own, UVA suspended all campus fraternities until January as a result of the Rolling Stone expose. Today, Rolling Stone posted the following note to readers (emphasis added):
To Our Readers: Last month, Rolling Stone published a story titled "A Rape on Campus" by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, which described a brutal gang rape of a woman named Jackie at a University of Virginia fraternity house; the university's failure to respond to this alleged assault – and the school's troubling history of indifference to many other instances of alleged sexual assaults. The story generated worldwide headlines and much soul-searching at UVA. University president Teresa Sullivan promised a full investigation and also to examine the way the school responds to sexual assault allegations. Because of the sensitive nature of Jackie's story, we decided to honor her request not to contact the man she claimed orchestrated the attack on her nor any of the men she claimed participated in the attack for fear of retaliation against her. In the months Erdely spent reporting the story, Jackie neither said nor did anything that made Erdely, or Rolling Stone's editors and fact-checkers, question Jackie's credibility. Her friends and rape activists on campus strongly supported Jackie's account. She had spoken of the assault in campus forums. We reached out to both the local branch and the national leadership of the fraternity where Jackie said she was attacked. They responded that they couldn't confirm or deny her story but had concerns about the evidence. In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie's account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced. We were trying to be sensitive to the unfair shame and humiliation many women feel after a sexual assault and now regret the decision to not contact the alleged assaulters to get their account. We are taking this seriously and apologize to anyone who was affected by the story. Will Dana Managing Editor

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on December 03, 2014 8 Comments
Yesterday, the Washington Post published a story about Donny Ray Williams, Jr. Williams is a convicted serial sexual abuser and former Democratic Senate aide. Ah what magic that little 'D' affiliation possesses. There was no story on Good Morning America, no major network news coverage of a serial rapist who will not be serving jail time, just a short form piece in the Washington Post. That's it. Mind you, the Washington Post and other media scalped Elizabeth Lauten, the Republican Congressional aide who was mildly critical of the Obama daughter's scant wardrobe choice on her personal Facebook page. Likely at the behest of the White House, WaPo assigned foreign policy reporters to cover Lauten. They began digging into her college papers, sealed juvenile record, and staking out her parent's home. Lauten quit and is currently in self-imposed exile. Credible sources indicate the White House was actively pitching the story of Lauten's unforgivable indiscretions to their favorite media outlets. Amazingly, the obscure Tennessee Congressman who employed Lauten was left completely out of the fray. Forgoing the "guilty by association" schtick, it was Lauten with the glowing red dot on her back. Make an example of Lauten and no one will dare throw shade at the Obama's again, seems to be the message in all of this. Nothing else explains the disproportionate use of force. Watching the inequity in media coverage got me all riled up (as we say in Texas). So I took to Twitter.

Posted by Amy Miller on December 02, 2014 30 Comments
The madding crowd has claimed another meaningless scalp, and it couldn't be happier about it. The internet exploded on Thanksgiving after Congressional staffer Elizabeth Lauten criticized the First Teens for their less-than enthusiastic attitude at the annual Presidential Turkey Pardoning. Yesterday, nearly a week after the offending Facebook post, Lauten resigned her job rather than allow the backlash to harm the reputations of her boss and fellow staffers. Anyone who has ever worked for an elected official knows that the slightest slip up can quickly turn from foible to gaffe to complete professional nightmare. In terms of self-preservation, staffers are defenseless, which makes them easy targets and a mess-free launchpad for a larger agenda. Let's be clear: the Right has engaged in plenty of staffer-shaming over the years, but it's been a long time since a member of a Congressional office has been so completely and utterly destroyed over comparatively mild Facebook commentary. The media's (both old and new) scalping of Elizabeth Lauten started on Twitter, blossomed in the quirky world of internet news, and then roared to life as mainstream news outlets roused themselves from their tryptophan stupor to engage in some serious journalism. Since that night, Lauten has been targeted online by both the mainstream media and private citizens, and doxed by professional "journalists" at home and abroad. In an act of ruthless messaging, the White House took charge of the situation and pitched the story to national news outlets. We're now at a point where no one knows what Elizabeth said, and furthermore no one cares what she said; her rude comment has been twisted and transformed into a rabid attack on the First Daughters, and there's no amount of commentary that can unring the bell.

Posted by David Gerstman on December 01, 2014 3 Comments

Matti Friedman again explains how NGO's and the media prepare the ground for anti-Israel propaganda...

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