The Media Is Biased - Example #666

My trust in the media has been waning for decades.  Their biases have always been made manifest in their reporting.

I was listening to coverage of Michigan's Senatorial contest on ABC News on the radio this morning.  The focus on their reporting was on how the Democrat candidate, al Sayed, has to motivate enough voters to win to make it easier for the Democrats to take control of the US Senate.  Democrat control of the Senate was framed as being a desirable outcome.

Putting someone who is at the least philosophically "kissing cousins" with communism [in the Senate] is not a desirable outcome.  We need fewer progressives/socialists/communists in the US Senate, not more.

At the very least, coverage of the race should be neutral with no implied preference in either direction.

Dante's Devil in Hell will thaw long before the mainstream media will check their biases at the door.

Systemic Biases

I was reading a profile of former California Governor Jerry Brown.  He is living a more private life on his farm.  He also serves as the head of the board that maintains the "clock" that measures the threat of nuclear war.

Within that story it was noted that the "clock" stands at 100 seconds to midnight...nuclear war...and that it had not been changed with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin having increased the alert level of Russia's nuclear forces.  President Biden elected not to make a corresponding adjustment to the alert level of America's nuclear forces.

Based on what I see, I think President Biden's choice was correct but that isn't what prompts me to set fingers to keyboard.

It is my opinion that this would not have been the situation had the nations been reversed.  Had the US President increased the alert level of our nuclear forces, then the "clock" would have certainly been moved towards "midnight".

Such is the bias of international non-governmental organizations and the media that report on their activities.  Their reactions are predictable and inequitable.  A shift in American policymaking is greeted with significant responses.  A shift in the whims of the world's dictators barely ruffles the feathers of those international organizations.

8/6/2025 - modest grammar correction

Yet Another Government Action Undermining Our Republic

There is an article over at Rasmussen discussing the 2020 census and the "updates" that have been applied by the Biden Administration.  While this is written as an opinion piece, it is being hosted over at Rasmussen; a serious polling firm that tries to do polling correctly and accurately.

The Biden Administration has inexplicably "adjusted" the population counts for several Democrat-leaning states.   The obvious result is that those states will not lose as many seats in the US House of Representatives.  The flip side of that is that there are Republican-leaning states that will not gain as many seats in the US House.

My many friends on the left that wonder why I distrust their version of expansionist government should refer back to this issue in the coming years.

There is an extensive and well-documented trend of people moving out of Democrat-leaning states and into Republican-leaning states.  Adjusting the census values to minimize that trend is questionable.  The fact that all of the adjustments run in one political direction is also questionable.

Highly questionable.

While I am not a big fan of "deep state" conspiracy theories, I do think there are cultural issues in play.  The civilian employees have a preference in terms of their working conditions and the operations of their respective agencies.  Generally, the larger the agencies, the better the employee's chances for advancement and the less their chance of being laid off.

People living in majority Democrat places tend to expect more government services and support the politicians that advocate for funding those services.  

There is a bit of symbiosis between Democrat politicians and government employees.  This isn't a purposeful conspiracy but rather is just the natural alignment of groups with objectives that complement one another.

Here's the problem.  If Donald Trump had won the 2020 election and had his administration "adjusted" the census count to enhance Republican representation in the US House without sufficient justification, then wouldn't the Democrats have screamed bloody murder?  Impeachment?  Hell, they would have howled even if the justifications were documented and reasonable.

The mainstream media, ever a leftist-friendly group, would have come unglued.  Allegations of vote fixing would be broadcast 24 hours per day.  It would have been presented as an abridgement of the voting rights of the citizens of those Democrat-leaning states.  Other speculation would have been offered with wild abandon.

I predict that none of these people will have any issue with the Biden Administration's attempt to manipulate the census for political objectives.  I also predict that they will look at anyone that questions these "adjustments" as if they had grown a third eye in a prominent location.

The lack of a critical media response is just the latest example of how our demonstrably biased media is undermining our great Republic.

The following are from the article.  Read the whole things for additional context.

No. 1: New York -- We've been tracking the annual population/migration changes between states since the last census in 2010. Over the past decade, New York LOST about 1.3 million residents on net to other states. (This does not include immigration, births and deaths.) Still, this is a population loss that is the equivalent of two, maybe three, lost congressional seats. But the final numbers ADDED approximately 860,000. That's roughly twice the population of Buffalo and Rochester -- combined. This is the state that has lost by far the largest population over the past decade.

No. 2: Many deep-blue states had 2020 census numbers significantly revised upward from their December estimates: Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont.

No. 3: Many red states had 2020 census numbers lower than their 2020 estimates: Arizona, North Carolina and South Carolina.

No. 4: Going back to the 2010 Census, the final head count in every state was within 0.4% of the original estimate, and 30 of them were within 0.2%. This time around, 19 states were more than 1% off, 7 were more than 2% off, NY was more than 3.8% off, and NJ was more than 4.5% off.

No. 5: Virtually every one of the large deviations from the estimates favored Democrats. Just five states in the 2020 census were within the same margin (0.41%) that all states were within from the 2010 census.

Media Bias - A Rumination On Ruination

 Media bias is real.  It has been measured in the past and it continues to be proven on a regular basis.  Project Veritas, in a tremendous bit of undercover reporting, got a CNN producer to admit that they had altered their news coverage to make Donald Trump look worse and Joe Biden look better.  Their intent was to alter the results of the 2020 Presidential election.  

It looks to me like they were successful.

A few weeks before that, CBS's 60 Minutes program offered some fake news as real news by attempting to paint Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as being in some way corrupt in his administration's deployment of the Covid vaccines.  60 Minutes lied.

What brings me to this topic today is how the illicit bias of our mainstream media is helping to undermine American civilization.

I watched it for years.  My dad would frequently go off on a rant about Donald Trump.  Sometimes he was right.  But more often than not he was basing his thoughts on his continual media diet of CNN along with occasional pieces from CBS, NBC, etc.  At no point did he encounter any media personality offering a dissenting opinion.

I'm not sure if it makes me sad or glad that dad wasn't around to find out that he was sold the fiction of the Trump/Russia allegations.

I am sad to see that it never ends.  The policies of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo undeniably resulted in tens of thousands of senior citizens dying due to Covid-19.  His administration lied about those deaths for months.  Yet the mainstream media lionizes Gov. Cuomo as being a marvelously successful governor.  Parenthetically, the administration of Michigan's Governor Gretchen Whitmer followed similar regulatory policies with reasonably similar results.

The same media portrays Ron DeSantis as being an absolute failure with respect to Covid-19.

The data tells a much different story.  As of February 15th, Florida's deaths due to Covid on a per capita basis were below the national average.  At the very least, in the middle of the pack.  Michigan ranked a bit higher.  A bunch of northeastern, high-density states had the worst outcomes.

But this isn't the story that you get from our mainstream media.  Instead, we get a highly distorted narrative where reporters commit verbal contortionism to create the impression that Democrat governors have all the correct policies while Republican governors have all the wrong policies.  So-called "red" states are presented as if people are dying in the streets.

The truth is more complex and a bit nuanced.  It is also true that attempting to fit any reporting on Covid into a strictly "Democrat vs. Republican" narrative is impossible if the media is committed to reporting the facts.  Some Democrats had good policies and some had bad ones.  The same is true for Republicans. 

If they are instead committed to acting as agents of propaganda, if they have taken a political side within the American culture, then the reporting of facts is no longer of concern.

And the ruination of American civilization lies dead ahead like the iceberg waiting on the Titanic.

WaPo - Predicatable Bias

Welcome back to LaaC - formerly Dann's Dain Bramage - formerly where I used to write on a regular basis.  Hopefully, this is a trend away from "formerly".

We have a couple Kindle's in the house.  One of them has an app from the Washington Post.  They very wisely offer the first few months of reading for free to get you hooked.  Then they ask for $1 for six months and then $4 a month thereafter.  Thus far, it appears to be just their current stories.  I haven't found a way look for past stories.  But I'm working on it.

I had resisted paying anything to the WaPo.  Their leftist bias shows up far too frequently.  However, I have enjoyed a lot of their non-biased reporting.  So we ponied up the buck to start paying for content.

And what do we get on day #1?  Predictable drivel.

The first story is on the kerfuffle in Texas over the coming military exercises.  For the record, I think the concern is misplaced.  Mr. Obama isn't running a stealth offensive against Texas or any other state.  Even if he were, the military wouldn't go along with it.

Also for the record and as the story suggests, a least part of the problem is that there are still folks that don't trust Mr. Obama based on the color of his skin.  That's a problem that the folks in the GOP are going to have to solve.  But is not the primary problem.  Not by a long short.

From the story:

Inside, county Chairman Albert Ellison pulled out a yellow legal pad on which he had handwritten page after page of reasons why many Texans distrust President Obama, including the fact that, “in the minds of some, he was raised by communists and mentored by terrorists.”

I would add that his formative years included inculcation in an anti-colonialist perspective.  Mr. Obama seems to not understand the importance of American strength (economic, diplomatic, and military) on the world political stage in liberating billions of people from oppressive regimes and/or lifting them out of poverty.  Our advocacy of individual liberty has had a tremendously positive influence in the world.  Based on his words and his works, I don't think he appreciates of the positive influence America has had in the last 100 years.

From the story:

Obama “doesn’t take national threats seriously enough,” Ellison said, ticking off Obama’s policies toward Russia, Iran, Cuba and the Islamic State, as well as illegal immigration across the U.S. southern border and the deadly attack in Benghazi, Libya.

“What he views as alarming instead is conservatism,” Ellison said, alleging that the Obama administration has used the Internal Revenue Service to attack the Tea Party and other conservative groups, been hostile to gun owners, issued what conservatives consider an illegal executive order to avoid deporting illegal immigrants, and “been complicit in stirring riots” in racially charged situations in Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore.

Again, for the record, Benghazi probably was not all that some folks think it was.  There was certainly a measure of incompetence involved, but there was also the fact that, contrary to some opinions, the U.S. does not exercise infinite control in every nation around the world.

The problem in the above has to do with illegal executive orders halting the deportations of illegal immigrants.  It isn't just "conservative groups" that have a problem with those orders.  So do the courts.  Perhaps the reporter that wrote this story should read more.

Administration lawyers lied in court. The technical term is perjury.  The only reason they aren't in jail is that our courts offer lawyers very collegial treatment.

The second article was on gun ownership in Japan.  The article describes a highly regulated activity that coincides with Japan's history as well as the character of Japanese culture.  It works for them and that is fine.

The problem...from the article:

In Japan, shooting is not something you do to let off steam. People don’t go to their local ranges in T-shirts and jeans to unload a few rounds into an Osama bin Laden target.

In which the author identifies herself as a hoplophobe with little experience with gun ranges in America.  Are there Osama bin Laden targets?  Of course.  Do people wear t-shirts and jeans?  Of course.  However, the article suggests that gun ranges are loaded with people burning ammo to "let off steam".  She suggests a lack of concern with marksmanship.

Nothing could be further from the truth.  People that shoot guns are obsessed with marksmanship.  An author that owned a gun and actually experienced life at a few gun ranges would know that and would accurately convey American gun culture.

Such cavalier misreporting by the media is frustrating.

Surely He Is Innocent!

The NYTimes predictably presents a fabulist interpretation of the detention of a terrorist at Gitmo.

I’ve been detained at Guantánamo for 11 years and three months. I have never been charged with any crime. I have never received a trial. 

I could have been home years ago — no one seriously thinks I am a threat — but still I am here. Years ago the military said I was a “guard” for Osama bin Laden, but this was nonsense, like something out of the American movies I used to watch. They don’t even seem to believe it anymore. But they don’t seem to care how long I sit here, either. 

When I was at home in Yemen, in 2000, a childhood friend told me that in Afghanistan I could do better than the $50 a month I earned in a factory, and support my family. I’d never really traveled, and knew nothing about Afghanistan, but I gave it a try. 

I was wrong to trust him. There was no work. I wanted to leave, but had no money to fly home. After the American invasion in 2001, I fled to Pakistan like everyone else. The Pakistanis arrested me when I asked to see someone from the Yemeni Embassy. I was then sent to Kandahar, and put on the first plane to Gitmo.

No one thinks he is guilty!  Why surely his interpretation of the events that led him to Gitmo must be 100% accurate.

Not quite.  Via the NYTimes' own website comes this information:

b. (S//NF) Recruitment and Travel: In the summer of 2000, Marwan Jawan (detainee's associate since the age of 8 or 10) 3 recruited detainee to travel to Afghanistan. Jawan prepared detainee for Afghanistan by providing him with training on the AK-47 assault rifle in al-Dahna, located approximately 30 minutes outside of Taiz. Based on these lessons, which occurred every Friday for four weeks preceding his travel to Afghanistan, detainee felt fully competent to go to the front-lines in Afghanistan. In late-2000, detainee traveled to Afghanistan via Dubai, United Arab Emirates (AE), and Karachi, Pakistan (PK). 4 The Pakistani travel visa in detainee's passport was obtained by Marwan. 5 c. (S//NF) Training and Activities: Detainee traveled to Afghanistan, and stayed at a house in the Wazir Akbar Khan District of Kabul. Detainee left his passport at the house in Kabul before going to the frontlines to fight the Northern Alliance. He fought at the front lines north of Kabul as a fighter in the Sadiq Combat Unit, which consisted of approximately 15 or 16 fighters. Detainee received some pay as a fighter which enabled him to purchase needed items such as food and clothing. Detainee denied knowing UBL. 6 After the US and Coalition bombing campaign initiated in Afghanistan, detainee believed it was too dangerous to be an Arab in Afghanistan; therefore he fled the front-lines in December 2001 and stopped in Kabul. Detainee continued on to Khowst, AF, where he stayed for two weeks while he attempted to flee from Afghanistan.

...

Capture Information: a. (S//NF) Detainee was captured by Pakistani forces on 15 December while attempting to cross the Afghanistan-Pakistan border near Parachinar, PK, after fleeing to the Tora Bora Mountains of Afghanistan. Detainee was captured with a group of 31 other Arab al-Qaida fighters referred to by US intelligence reporting as the Dirty 30, most of whom are assessed to be UBL bodyguards and other members of UBL's security detail. 8 Pakistani authorities transferred the group to a prison facility in Peshawar, PK, where they were held for 15 days. 9 On 26 December 2001, Pakistani authorities transferred detainee from Peshawar to US custody at the Kandahar Detention Facility.

....

Detainee Threat: a. (S) Assessment: Detainee is assessed to be a HIGH risk, as he is likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests, and allies. b. (S//NF) Reasons for Continued Detention: Detainee is a member of al-Qaida. Detainee served as a security guard for UBL and is listed on al-Qaida affiliated documents. Detainee is assessed to have participated in hostilities against US and Coalition forces in Tora Bora and was a fighter in UBL's 55th Arab Brigade. Detainee was captured with a group referred to as the Dirty 30, which included known UBL bodyguards. Detainee received basic and advanced militant training at the al-Qaida al-Faruq Training Camp, and was an al-Qaida guesthouse staff member. Detainee was recruited by known al-Qaida recruiter Marwan Jawan, who also facilitated detainee's travel to Afghanistan. o (S//NF) Detainee is a member of al-Qaida and a former UBL security guard. Detainee's name and alias were found on al-Qaida affiliated documents.

The phenomenon of the NYTimes editorial page staff not reading their own newspaper [is not exactly new].  Clearly this individual is not what his "editorial" suggests he is.

There are elements of the media that are not simply striving to be independent.  They are clearly on the other side.  Far too frequently, the NYTimes editorial page staff strives to be included in that category.

Violence Against Women - Media Bias Edition

I was listening to an NPR report on John Boehner a couple days ago.  The reporter was insinuating that Mr. Boehner's leadership was lacking because he could not compel the GOP caucus in the House to support bills that his office was bringing to the House floor.  The example used was the recent continuation of the Violence Against Women Act.

The final bill passed in the House by a vote of 286 - 138.  Only 87 Republicans voted for this version of the bill.  Other Republicans had issues with the bill that ranged from questions of Constitutionality with regards to expanding tribal law enforcement authority beyond tribal members to ideological issues with providing abortion services to rape victims.

For the record, I think the Constitution matters.  Questions regarding Constitutionality matter.  I do not know if their concerns were fully legitimate as I have not studied the issue with any depth.

Also for the record, the GOP needs to get off the anti-abortion wagon.

Back to the issue of Mr. Boehner's leadership, I find it curious that he is being criticized for bringing a bill to the floor that passed the House and was signed into law as this is being typed.  He is the Speaker of the House.  He is not the Speaker of the GOP in the House.  Mr. Boehner's position exists to serve every American. 

So he brought a bill with bi-partisan support to the floor for a vote.  That is is job.

Isn't bi-partisanship something we want?  Or does bi-partisanship only count when the GOP is caving to a Democratic initiative?

Can You Hear The Hate?

Probably not.

During a recent interview on NPR, ESPN's Howard Bryant made an analogy between the remorseful cyclist Lance Armstrong and a theoretic spokesman for the NRA.

I mean, I think the big problem that I had with listening to Lance over the last couple of days was how controlled – how much he was trying to control this confession. That someone had put out a very funny tweet in my timeline that other day that said, "With this much remorse he could be the next spokesperson for the NRA." I mean, it was really that controlling. And I'm listening to this, and I'm thinking, he's not sorry at all about this.

But when a listener later went to the NPR website to get the transcript, the offensive remark had been scrubbed.....er...edited.

Just imagine if this had been Fox News instead.....

Global Warming And Asteroids

Via Newsbusters comes the story about a CNN anchor that asked Bill Nye (the theoretically "science" guy) if the recent near visit by an asteroid was the result of "global warming".

And folks wonder why I don't trust the media when it comes to the science of climate change.

For the record, Mr. Nye avoided addressing the obvious error in the young lady's question.

Fooling Yourself

What do Todd Akin and Chicago Tribune have in common?  They both tell themselves lovely lies so they can sleep at night.

Was Akin engaged in "an intentional deception"? That seems highly implausible, as it implies both that he knew that what he was saying was false and that he expected others to believe it was true. It's much likelier that, like Knowles and his staff at the Tribune, Akin was misinformed and made "a careless mistake."

It would be preposterous, however, to deny that Akin was biased. Indeed it seems obvious that he believed the falsehood in question because that falsehood made it easier to justify his ideological position to himself (and, he mistakenly believed, to others).

The falsehood from the Chicago Tribune had to do with a blatantly misleading graphic and story about "assault weapons".  

While we can usually count on the media to point out when politicians are telling themselves and us fantastic fabrications, who can we count on to point out when the media is equally full of it?

Media Antics - NPR Edition

I was listening to the Diane Rehm show last Friday.  There was a discussion about defense priorities and relations in the Middle East and southern Asia.  There was a part of the discussion where the panelists were discussing future troop strength in Afghanistan and a number of options were presented.

One of the panelists suggested that Mr. Obama would probably work towards the middle option.

The asshat of the panel chimed in with "As he does on every issue."  A classic example of why Ms. Rehm needs a staff "truth detector" for her program.  Whenever things get a little....thick, shall we say....the "truth detector" would fire off a klaxon or two to let the audience know that the discussion has significantly deviated from reality.

'Cause the reality is that while Mr. Obama has taken a centrist position on some issues, he has taken some pretty leftist positions on others.  Health care comes to mind.  Deficit spending and taxation are also areas where he is well left of the center of American political opinion.

I genuinely enjoy listening to NPR.  Mostly.

But it is instances like this that make me not only want to end federal subsidies for NPR, but to levy confiscatory taxes on the organization so we can recoup the money wasted on them in years past.

Laying The Groundwork

Glenn Reynolds had a recent column in the NY Post where he suggested that GOP backers could spend their political dollars more wisely by investing in women's magazines and websites.

For $150 million, you could buy or start a lot of women’s Web sites. And I’d hardly change a thing in the formula. The nine articles on sex, shopping and exercise could stay the same. The 10th would just be the reverse of what’s there now.

For the pro-Republican stuff, well, just visit the “Real Mitt Romney” page at snopes.com, or look up the time Mitt Romney rescued a 14-year-old kidnap victim, to see the kind of feel-good stories that could have been running. For the others, well, it would run articles on whether Bill Clinton should get a pass on his affairs, whether it’s right that the Obama White House pays women less than men, and reports on how the tax system punishes women.

This stuff writes itself, probably more easily than the Spin Sisters’ pabulum. And opening up a major beachhead in this section of the media is probably a lot cheaper than challenging major newspapers and TV networks head on.

The only losers will be the political consultants who ate up so much of the GOP’s cash this time around.

Are rich Republican donors smart enough to do something like this? Well, we’ll find out.

One of the frustrations that keep me from absorbing too much of the main stream media is precisely the sort of unbalanced reporting that Glenn suggests is going on.  Society and cultural stories that highlight the "cool" factor of everyone on the left.  Stories that suggest that everyone on the right is an old, white guy with no sense of humour.

NPR became unlistenable in the months leading up to last fall's election.  The one bright note is that NPR is survivable now that the election is over and there isn't a need to sell their left leaning audience on a left leaning Presidency.  Auditory comfort food for the left is apparently now a lower priority.

As Glenn suggests, engaging low information voters in the media format that they currently enjoy should become a priority if we are ever to recover our Constitutionally limited government.

Sexual Harassment In The Bush Administration

Why didn't we hear more?  Oopsie!  Wrong label!

As the Blogfather has sagely observed, this sort of thing gets less media play when the Democrats are in the White House.

Bias Acknowledged

The ombudsman for the NYTimes recently penned a column about what he has discovered over his two years in that position.  The whole column is worth a read.  However, he makes a couple of points that support the larger contention about the perspective of the NYTimes.

The first is that the Times....their occasionally valiant ombudsman aside...rarely sees where they may have erred in their reporting.

The Times is hardly transparent. A reader still has to work very hard to find any Times policies online (though some are tucked away there), and there is still no place where Times editors speak on the issues. As for humility, well, The Times is Lake Wobegon on steroids (everybody’s way above average). I don’t remember many autopsies in which, as we assembled over the body, anyone conceded that maybe this could have been done differently.

Emphasis in the original.

The second of Mr. Wilson's more interesting observations relates to (gasp) bias.

I also noted two years ago that I had taken up the public editor duties believing “there is no conspiracy” and that The Times’s output was too vast and complex to be dictated by any Wizard of Oz-like individual or cabal. I still believe that, but also see that the hive on Eighth Avenue is powerfully shaped by a culture of like minds — a phenomenon, I believe, that is more easily recognized from without than from within. 

When The Times covers a national presidential campaign, I have found that the lead editors and reporters are disciplined about enforcing fairness and balance, and usually succeed in doing so. Across the paper’s many departments, though, so many share a kind of political and cultural progressivism — for lack of a better term — that this worldview virtually bleeds through the fabric of The Times. 

As a result, developments like the Occupy movement and gay marriage seem almost to erupt in The Times, overloved and undermanaged, more like causes than news subjects.

This isn't exactly earth shattering news to those of us that don't work for or uncritically believe everything in the New York Times.

The story also notes the credibility of the times among Republicans has dropped relative to Fox News.  It is also noted that the credibility of Fox News among Democrats relative to the NYTimes is almost precisely inverse of that measured among Republicans.

This isn't progress.

Part of being able to have a common debate of the issues is being able to have a common basis for that debate.  When the media effectively chooses sides in their news reporting, they undermine our ability to conduct a civil discourse on current events.

An examples would be claiming that the "science is settled" with respect to global warming.  Ummm...it ain't.

Another example might be consistently reporting about potential effects of raising taxes on the budget deficit without concomitantly reporting about potential effects of cutting spending.  Or at least discussing those cuts in a manner that doesn't suggest that proponents of cuts are some sort of ghoul looking to feast on the dead.

I have maintained for many years that the rise of Rush Limbaugh and Fox News was the direct result of the media failing to publish "all the news that's fit to print".  Perhaps the Times will discover this before they turn into the next Village Voice.

What Media Bias?

Courtesy of the Blogfather:

TWEET OF THE DAY: Republican makes a gaffe, @WashingtonPost reports it for a week. Obama makes one, they assume it’s PhotoShop.

Who Me?

Just in case there are any doubts about bias within the NBC news media, check out the latest innovation on MSNBC:  Lean Forward.

For those not in the know, "Foward" is this year's campaign slogan for Mr. Obama's campaign.  It is a term that has a lengthy history in socialist groups and governments.

That isn't to say that Mr. Obama is the second coming of Joseph Stalin or Adolf Hitler.  He is however further to the left than is prudent for a free country that wants to remain free.

And which way does NBC apparently "Lean"?

"Forward".

A Little Foolish Consistency

Given the amount of flack that I toss towards the NY Times, WaPo, NPR, and others, I would be remiss in not also pointing out the recent incident of bias by Fox News (as opposed to one of their opinion shows).  So in case you were wondering, the Fox News staff does apparently lean to the right.  That sort of bias has no business being associated with the presentation of news/facts.

Also for the record, that makes the score:

News organizations that lean to the right - 2
News organizations that lean to the left - hundreds if not thousands

Media Bias - Smaller Scale

I ran across this article about a small, New York based, public TV station a while back.  The author maintains that he saw repeated incidents of bias on the part of station employees and managers during his time on the staff.

With my own eyes, I saw producers laughing and cheering at TV news reporting the assassination attempt on President Reagan. 

While by not no means definitive, it does provide an interesting insight into some portion of the media.  This is the sort of thing that begs for an undercover investigation!

Never Think The Worst

I'm glad I waited for clarification before offering any commentary about this event.  This was what I was hoping had happened.

"Whoever shot at the White House is basically a terrorist," LoRusso tells CityBeat, "and I was holding a moment of silence for the White House and President Obama and everyone in the White House. I wasn't holding a moment of silence for the terrorist in any way. We're a peaceful movement, and we don't support people shooting at the White House."

Although I do wonder if Dave Maass is aware that there are leftist blowhards that do much the same to folks that are not of a leftist mindset.  Me might try reading the pages of the NYTimes, WaPo...etc...etc....

What Media Bias? - NPR Edition

I expect better from NPR's news reporting staff.

In his most recent speech, Mr. Obama claimed that Abraham Lincoln founded the GOP.  He didn't.  He joined the GOP two years after it the first convention.

Not a huge gaffe in the larger scheme of things.  But similar, inconsequential gaffes have been committed...and sometimes were not committed but where inferred by the media....by contenders within the GOP and resulted in all sorts of tongue clicking, tsking, and other forms of disapproval by the media.

In this case?  NPR simply omits the gaffe from their transcript.

But let's not get sidetracked by issues of media bias.  I am 100% certain that the media has no way of influencing any portion of the electorate.

Sure.  Right.