Media Bias
May 13, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
The Washington Post editorial board falls well short of its usual standards in this superficial and intellectually dishonest piece of partisanship attacking Republicans for opposing Tom Perez’s nomination for Secretary of Labor. The Post characterizes Republican opposition as driven purely by policy disagreements: Democrats highly regard Mr. Perez, a former secretary of labor in Maryland, for his aggressive action on voting rights, police abuse and fair lending cases. Republicans dislike
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May 13, 2013 — John Hinderaker
The New York Times initially covered the IRS scandal on page A11 of the Saturday paper. Having thought over the best line to take, the paper’s editors came up with this: Sure, it’s all about politics! Deeper in the article, the Times explains further: Since last year’s elections, Republicans in Congress have struggled for traction on their legislative efforts, torn between conservatives who drove the agenda after their 2010 landslide
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May 9, 2013 — Steven Hayward
When I wrote my much-misunderstood and mischaracterized feature on “Is Conservatism Brain-Dead?” in the Washington Post four years ago (wow–can it really be four years already?), no passage caused a more mixed reaction than my mixed judgment on Glenn Beck: The case of Glenn Beck, Time magazine’s “Mad Man,” is more interesting. His on-air weepiness is unmanly, his flirtation with conspiracy theories a debilitating dead-end, and his judgments sometimes loopy
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April 29, 2013 — Steven Hayward
It’s an axiom of American cosmopolitanism that Europe is far advanced over the United States in terms of social democracy, tolerance, openness, and so forth, and at the pinnacle of European sophistication stands France. The French have it over us on everything from existential filmmaking, wine and cheese, anti-semitism, and embrace of gay . . . —wait, what’s this? A major populist uprising against gay marriage in France, with hundreds
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April 29, 2013 — Steven Hayward
How did I miss these two 30-second videos last week while compiling the Week in Pictures? The first is a recording, via YouTube, of NPR’s Dina Temple-Raston speculating that the Boston bombing was likely the result of right-wing extremists because Hitler’s birthday was about to be observed. Even though this video has only sound but no images, you have to hear it, not to believe it–much better than reading the
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April 20, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Ted Cruz has made quite an impression in just three months in the Senate. Like Marco Rubio, he is the son of a Cuban exile. He is a extraordinarily talented guy. Unlike Barack Obama, he had a stellar record both in academia and in the practice of law: he was national debating champion, graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, clerked for the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court,
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April 14, 2013 — Steven Hayward
I know, a true catalogue of liberal hypocrisy would run longer than War and Peace, before breakfast. But sometimes you need to take note of especially egregious instances. So notice, for example, that while liberals are demanding increased background checks for gun purchases, Obama’s nominee for secretary of labor, Tom Perez, opposes allowing employers with federal contrasts to use background checks for new prospective employees. Ken Masugi is on the
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April 10, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
“Courts Without Judges” reads the headline of an attack on Senate Republicans by the New York Times editorial board. Bemoaning the fact that there 85 vacancies in the federal judiciary, the Times asserts that “by far the most important cause of this unfortunate state of affairs is the determination of Senate Republicans, for reasons of politics, ideology and spite, to confirm as few of President Obama’s judicial choices as possible.”
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April 9, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Matt Salmon, the gay son of a Republican congressman, says that CNN’s Piers Morgan and MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell canceled interviews with him because he refused to criticize his father, who is not a supporter of same-sex marriage. The rejection of guests because they won’t serve as props to further the host’s simplistic narrative isn’t confined to CNN and MSNBC. I experienced it with a well-known Fox News talk-show host. But
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April 4, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Steve wrote earlier today that he feels like he is living in a personal Groundhog Day, where it is perpetually April 1. I have that feeling too, never more so than with regard to the Middle East. The phrase “deja vu” doesn’t begin to do it justice. Today we got this report from the Associated Press: “Thousands of Palestinians protest in West Bank.” Stop me if you’ve heard this story
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April 3, 2013 — Steven Hayward
“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity,” George Orwell reminds us in his classic essay “Politics and the English Language.” (By the way, I typically assign students to read this essay in every course I teach, regardless of the subject. Not only is it a good aid to writing, but it also indirectly undermines a lot of political correctness.) This is preface to noting Jay Leno’s observation last night
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April 3, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Marco Rubio hasn’t been in Washington all that long, but one hopes he’s been here long enough not to take advice from the Washington Post. Yet, the Post offers him some in its lead editorial of today. The Post (print edition) advises Rubio that he can be a “tea party darling” or “the architect of a historic immigration bill,” but he can’t be both. The Post so informs Rubio in
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March 24, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Over at City Journal, Heather Mac Donald calls out the New York Times: It takes determination to out-demagogue New York City’s anti-cop advocates, but the New York Times has done just that. A front-page article in Friday’s print edition announces: BRONX INSPECTOR, SECRETLY TAPED, SUGGESTS RACE IS A FACTOR IN STOPS. The story goes on to claim in its lead paragraph that a secretly taped recording “suggests that, in at
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March 21, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Investigative reporter/editor Tom Lipscomb is a Senior Fellow at the Annenberg Center for the Digital Future (USC) and the founder of Times Books. He broke stories on questions about the military records of both John Kerry and George W. Bush in the 2004 election in the Chicago Sun-Times and the New York Sun. Tom argues that the media’s allegiance to the Democratic Party is suppressing news: In one of the
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March 19, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Walter Olson is Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and author of several books on litigation. He holds down the fort at Overlawyered. He has forwarded a column responding to the flurry of articles that appeared in the liberal press a few weeks ago opposing the federal law that bans certain gun lawsuits (the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act), led by the Washington Post. Since then the attacks
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March 16, 2013 — Scott Johnson
BBC Middle East editor Paul Danahar happened to be on hand in Gaza for the opening of Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense. When the son of Danahar’s BBC Gaza colleague Jihad Masharawi was killed at the outset of the operation this past November, Danahar all but accused Israel of murder. Via his Twitter account @pdanahar, Danahar tweeted his reaction to young Masharawi’s death: “Questioned [sic] asked here is: if Israel
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March 15, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Paul Danahar is the BBC Middle East editor and the subject of part 3 of this series, which I will wind up tomorrow. When the son of Danahar’s BBC Gaza colleague Jihad Masharawi was killed at the outset of Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense this past November, Danahar all but accused Israel of murder. Via his Twitter account @pdanahar, Danahar tweeted his reaction to young Masharawi’s death: “Questioned [sic] asked
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