Media Bias
October 25, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Britain’s BBC has taken flak for refusing to call Hamas’s fighters “terrorists.” The network’s management has stood fast on this point, arguing that to stigmatize Hamas as terrorists would constitute taking sides in the conflict, and the BBC is staunchly neutral. But that mildly pro-Hamas stance is nowhere near enough for many of the BBC’s employees. The Times of London offers a frightening glimpse into the mentality of many young
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October 24, 2023 — Lloyd Billingsley
“Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital, Palestinians Say,” the New York Times headlined its October 17 front-page story, accompanied by a photo of a bombed-out building. As it turned out, the building wasn’t the hospital and it wasn’t an “Israeli strike.” As a replication of Hamas propaganda that was hard to top, but the Washington Post gave it a shot. On October 19, the Post ran a story about families
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October 23, 2023 — Steven Hayward
I thought the New York Times had once again stolen the prize for the dumbest article of the last few days with this entry: Exxon Mobil’s Pioneer Acquisition Is a Direct Threat to Democracy Even the cliches in the article are 20 years out of date, but I’m sure the author, Jeff Colgan, professor of political science and the director of the Climate Solutions Lab at Brown University, is already
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October 20, 2023 — John Hinderaker
The New York Times has taken well-deserved criticism of its article on the fake bombing of a hospital in Gaza. Not only did the paper credit Hamas propaganda to the effect that the damage to the hospital was caused by an Israeli bomb, it also repeated Hamas’s false claims as to the nature of the damage and the number of casualties. It even printed a photo, supposedly of the destroyed
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October 18, 2023 — John Hinderaker
The British Broadcasting Company is a notoriously anti-Semitic news outlet. Currently, the BBC is under pressure to start calling Hamas a “terrorist” organization rather than a “militant” one. The BBC is stoutly defending its refusal to label Hamas as terrorist, claiming that it is neutral in the conflict between Israel and Hamas, and calling Hamas terrorists would mean taking a side. In fact, of course, the BBC has never been
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October 12, 2023 — John Hinderaker
A supercilious Sky News “journalist” interviewed former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and almost immediately started interrogating him about Palestinian civilians. What is Israel going to do to assure that no Palestinian civilians are harmed? Happily, Bennett wasn’t having it. He fired back with both barrels, to the discomfiture of the reporter, who at the end was left refusing to answer Bennett’s question. It is pretty glorious:
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October 12, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Floyd Mayweather is one of the greatest fighters of all time, but he has never claimed to be a moral paragon. Still, he knows where he stands on decapitating babies: God bless Floyd Mayweather pic.twitter.com/X9IaE5jzRO — Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) October 11, 2023 You have to be much, much smarter than a mere boxer to contemplate gang rape, mass murder of men, women and children, taking of hostages, spitting on
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September 29, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Dianne Feinstein died last night. She cast a Senate vote earlier in the day. Tributes to her are pouring in, which is natural and appropriate. But check out how the Washington Post described her: I think it is true that Feinstein was not as crazy as some of her Democratic colleagues, but is there any plausible sense in which she was a centrist? The American Conservative Union rates members of
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September 27, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Liberals love to talk about misinformation. They also love to disseminate it. A case in point is New York Times health and science reporter Apoorva Mandavilli. She grotesquely exaggerated the impact of covid on children, apparently for the purpose of supporting school shutdowns, one of the worst policy fiascos of modern times. And her claims were not, remotely, in the ballpark: Reporter who wrote in NYT that 900,000 children had
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September 21, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Dave Portnoy is the founder of Barstool Sports, a popular sports blog. For some reason the Washington Post decided to do a hit piece on Portnoy and assigned one of its totally biased young hack “reporters,” Emily Heil, to do the piece. Portnoy got wind of the story in the works from one of his advertisers that Heil contacted, and decided to pre-empt the story by calling Heil on the
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September 19, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Michael Tomasky, nowadays the editor of The New Republic (a former magazine), attempts to explain why the awesome Joe Biden isn’t getting sufficient credit from the American people for all his awesome achievements, and his general all-around awesomeness. The main culprit is—right-wing domination of the news media! I. Am. Not. Making. This. Up. In fact, the right-wing media might finally be bigger [than mainstream media]. Mainstream media audiences and newsrooms
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September 18, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Tonight was the Minnesota Republican Party’s annual Elephant Club dinner. Former George W. Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer was the speaker. My wife and I were luckily seated at the head table. Ari did a very good job, speaking mostly on the topic of his recent book, Suppression, Deception, Snobbery, and Bias: Why the Press Gets So Much Wrong―And Just Doesn’t Care. His speech included a Power Point with egregious
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September 13, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Speaker Kevin McCarthy has announced the commencement of an impeachment inquiry. In response, the Biden administration wrote its press lackeys, instructing them in how they should cover the proceedings: “Covering impeachment as a process story – Republicans say X, but the White House says Y – is a disservice to the American public who relies on the independent press to hold those in power accountable,” Sams wrote in the letter,
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September 13, 2023 — John Hinderaker
When we started this web site, we spent a lot of time criticizing what was then called the “mainstream media.” Over the years, I have done this less and less. Twenty years ago, the legacy press at least pretended to be fair and objective its reporting, so we pointed out errors and biases. But today, the pretense is gone: most media outlets are shills for the Democratic National Committee, and
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September 12, 2023 — Elizabeth Stauffer
As with every political party, there exists a broad spectrum in terms of extremity among Democrats, whose members range from the sane, such as Bill Maher and George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, to the rabid, such as Fox News’ token liberal Juan Williams and the New York Times’ Frank Bruni. Obviously, I am a creature of the Right, and perhaps I’ve become intolerant with age, but I can
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September 2, 2023 — Scott Johnson
James Taranto observed in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal apropos of the Dem/media assault on Justice Thomas that “[o]ne reason Americans don’t trust the media is that politically biased reporters routinely adulterate the news with tendentious language and prepackaged opinions. The result is crude propaganda—lousy opinion writing and unreliable information rolled into one and deceptively packaged as straight news.” Take the case of the Washington Post and Post “national columnist” Philip
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September 1, 2023 — Scott Johnson
The Washington Free Beacon has compiled the video below contrasting the media treatment of John Fetterman’s stroke-related brain damage with Mitch McConnell’s something-related “freeze” (related story here). ¿Quien esta mas impedido? John Fetterman’s stroke-related disability appears to be a credit to the human spirit and to the United States Senate, formerly known as the world’s most exclusive club. By contrast, McConnell’s most recent “freeze” gets an unsympathetic, i.e., realistic treatment,
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