liberal media bias

Whether It’s A Double Standard Or A Biden Exception, It’s Media Bias and It’s Wrong

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

On CNN, the gang was discussing and chuckling over one of Joe Biden’s lesser gaffes, not that the same gaffe wouldn’t have had them screaming and shaking their fists if, say, Chris Christie had spoken similarly. In this case (with Biden, gaffes should be given case numbers; I’m guessing this one would be about #6,782,304), Biden used the uncivil term “bitch” when referring to the role of Vice President. This provoked Chris Cuomo to express his affection for Lunch Bucket Joe, saying…

 “I still love Biden for what he is. I just do. I think his candor is refreshing – and when he is insensitive to something, he owns it. What more can you ask for? Perfection?”

What does this even mean? Let me rephrase that. What the hell does this even mean? “For what he is”? Does Chris mean “an ongoing embarrassment”? A gaffe machine a heartbeat away from the Presidency? An unapologetic clown in a position of high responsibility and influence? You know what Chris really means, don’t you? He means nothing more nor less than, “I love Joe Biden because I love liberal Democrats, even silly, inept, dumb ones.”

Is that an admission that we should take lightly? Does it matter? Yes, I think it matters. Continue reading →

NUCLEAR KABOOM! CNN Assigns Jay Carney To Cover Obama’s Speech: Could It Be More Contemptuous Of Fairness And Objectivity?

/ Jack Marshall / 68 Comments

head explodes

My head hadn’t exploded for a while, and I thought perhaps it had built up some immunity from the detonating effects of ethics breaches that defied all reason. Then I read this in Politico:

Former White House Press Secretary Jay Carney will join CNN as a political commentator, the network announced Wednesday.

He will start Wednesday night as President Barack Obama makes a primetime statement about the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant , Sam Feist, CNN’s Washington bureau chief said in a statement.

“Jay’s unique experience as both a journalist and a White House press secretary make him an invaluable voice for the network as we cover the final two years of the Obama Administration and look ahead to the coming campaigns,” Feist said. “We’re fortunate to have Jay on our air tonight to provide analysis and insight surrounding the President’s address to the nation.”

KABOOM!

Get the squeegee and the ladder, hon—my brains are on the ceiling.

Continue reading →

Unethical Tweet Of The Month: New York Magazine Columnist Frank Rich

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments
Stay classy, Frank.

Stay classy, Frank.

Full disclosure: I went to college with Frank Rich. He gave me a rave review for a performance once. When he turned into the vicious, biased, hateful jerk he reveals himself to be in his not merely progressive but irrationally  hostile to conservatism op-ed columns and, prior to that, his vitriolic and hyper-critical theater reviews for the Times, I don’t know. Maybe if I had befriended him back then, he would not be the bitter misanthrope his is today. Maybe just an outstretched hand, a kind word, or a sharp, “Why don’t you stop being such a dick?” would have turned the tide of his life around. Alas, we shall never know.

Here is what Rich tweeted yesterday, upon learning of the guilty verdict handed down against former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell and his wife:

Rich Tweet

Continue reading →

More On The Perry Indictment: The Mark Of Hack Partisan Journalism

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

H

The unethical indictment of Republican Texas Governor Rick Perry in Travis County (Austin) for the “crime” of trying to force a drunk, power abusing, ethically corrupt district attorney from continuing to head the Public Integrity Unit—quick, now, Democrats…why is this a bad thing?—is a rare opportunity for otherwise incorrigibly biased journalists to show some token integrity and fairness. What is forfeited, after all, by admitting the obvious, that Perry is being railroaded by an abuse of prosecutorial power to derail him politically? Perry is no real threat to win the Presidency, no matter how high his stock is now. We all saw why in 2012.

So the liberal media has no need to play gotcha, and could, for a change, actually do its job: show the public why the indictment is nothing but a political hit job; why it’s a breach of legal ethics, how disgracefully Travis County DA Rosemary Lehmberg has conducted herself; why she is obligated to resign after breaking the law, trying to use her position to intimidate police officers on video, having her law license suspended, and apparently doing nothing about the fact that she is a raging drunk; why having such an individual heading up the agency responsible for public integrity is a threat to the public well-being and the public trust; and why a Governor of any political affiliation doing everything he can to pressure such a miserable and incompetent DA to resign as she had a professional obligation to do is, not merely not criminal, but admirable.

But most of them just can’t bring themselves to do it. So here is the Daily Beast partisan hack news commentary website, the yin on the left to the yang of Tucker Carlson’s partisan hack Daily Caller on the right, which wouldn’t be necessary if there weren’t a Daily Beast,  publishing this piece by its partisan hack staffer Mark McKinnon, implying that there may be validity to the indictment, suggesting that Perry did something wrong, and glossing over how disgusting it is that Lehmberg  still holds office. Continue reading →

Smoking Gun Headline Of The Month: The Washington Post

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Smoking-GunThe headline, on a story appearing on page A4 of today’s Washington Post: “Obama’s Critics Have Not Visited The Border Recently.” (Note: the online version headline is a little different.)

How odd, and how revealing. Apparently White House and Democratic talking points will now be published in headline typeface by D.C.’s iconic, once trusted, newspaper. What? Continue reading →

Being Fair To Hillary

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments
"I'm doing this because I think it makes me look passionate..."

“I’m doing this because I think it makes me look passionate and sincere…”

I wanted to write about fairness this morning, in part because a troll that I ended up banning yesterday kept insisting that the ethical value of fairness was about “feelings.” (Have you visited, by the way, the excellent website, listed among the links here, fairness.com? You should!) That’s nonsense, but it is certainly true that fairness is often a controversial concept, and opinions of what constitutes fairness can diverge widely.

In the process of the mainstream media trying to ram Hillary Clinton down our throats as the next oppressed group President who couldn’t be impeached no matter what she did—and how entertaining it is watching Chris Cuomo grimace, roll his eyes and bite his tongue as his female CNN colleagues shift into “Yay Hillary!” mode every morning—, the pro-Hillary journalists are increasingly becoming full-fledged campaign flacks, which is disgraceful. Watch this interview with Sen. Ted Cruz, for example, in which CNN’s Erin Burnett plays the role of a Clinton defender on Benghazi without any hint of objectivity at all. They are also, however, having to cope with the uncomfortable facts of Clinton’s career, and if they intend to keep defending her—and they do—the hypocrisy will become overwhelming.

The Melinda Henneberger of the Washington Post, for example, notes that “an unpublished interview” has surfaced in which Clinton expresses glee at the acquittal of an accused child rapist she was defending. The documents from the case show that Clinton, who was defending the man pro bono as a young lawyer, offered the kind of defense that feminists condemn, questioning the conduct and the propriety of the victim. Henneberger pre-empts criticism by properly explaining the lawyer’s duty of zealous representation before she even describes what Clinton did. Would she have handled such a story the same way if the young lawyer had been “War on Women” monger Mitt Romney? I doubt it very much. Similarly, Jennifer Rubin in the same paper wonders if the media will use Clinton’s wealth, employment of tax reduction strategies and presumed greed against her, as it did Mitt. Good question, though the answer is pretty obvious, I think. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Month: Constitutional Scholar Floyd Abrams

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

This is a long quote, and deserves to be.

You can read it in its entirety here.

Wacky!

Wacky!

The whole quote is the testimony of Floyd Abrams, the renowned Constitutional lawyer who argued Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, before the U.S. Supreme Court, regarding a cynical Constitutional Amendment, S.J.19, ostensibly proposed to change the First Amendment so Citizens United can be overturned, but really as a campaign issue, since the chances of amending the Constitution are nil, and they know it. This proposed amendment is the Left’s equivalent of the despicable flag-burning amendment pushed by Republicans in the late Eighties, just as disingenuous, just as offensive to free speech, equally constricted to appeal to voters who don’t understand what free speech is.

The Citizens United opinion has been blatantly misrepresented by everyone from Occupy Wall Street to the President, and continues to be a source of political deceit by Democrats and their allies in the media, often out of ignorance. If you have friends who are prone to say silly things about “corporations being people” and “billionaires buying elections,” you should tell them to read Abrams’ testimony, and learn some things they should have learned in high school.

Some highlights (there are many more): Continue reading →

Sorry, Chris Cuomo: You’d Be An Ethics Hero If It Wasn’t For Your Blatant Conflict Of Interest

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCC7s7FxJp4

CNN’s  co-host on “New Day,” Chris Cuomo,  is about as pro-active a news anchor as one can imagine, often hijacking interviews and advocating his own positions as his guests listen. All of CNN’s morning hosts do this; though Cuomo wears his progressive pedigree on his sleeve, he is less annoying in the practice than colleagues like Carol Costello, in part because he is smarter, fairer, and less predictable. Sometimes he bucks the liberal line, and an Ethics Hero-worthy example occurred this week, when he repeatedly mocked the media’s ongoing coronation of Hillary Clinton, and the Malaysian airliner-level coverage she has been getting on CNN, and elsewhere.   CNN, after a segment on Hillary Clinton’s interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer as part of the former Secretary of State’s book promotion, Cuomo made such comments as these:

  • “Coming up on New Day, the Hillary Clinton book tour: Is it really the kickoff to her presidential campaign? Because, otherwise, why are we talking about it so much?”
  • “It’s a problem because what she’s doing is what they call in politics “freezing pockets” because the donors are giving her money thinking she’s going to run. That means they’re not going to have available money for other candidates…if she doesn’t. And I don’t think she’s going to give it to them.
  • “We couldn’t help her any more than we have, you know. I mean, she’s got just a free ride so far from the media. We’re the biggest ones promoting her campaign, so it better happen.”
  • “Coming up on New Day, the endless reading of the Hillary tea leaves continues. She’s now speaking out about her decision on whether to decide, and we’re covering this as if she has decided.”

Bravo! Except that there’s one little problem that throws the legitimacy of Cuomo’s refreshingly candid (and accurate) exposition of the news media’s functioning as part of the Clinton campaign PR apparatus. Continue reading →

Ethics Observations On Tim Geithner’s Ethics Quote Of The Month

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Stress Test

“I remember during one Roosevelt Room prep session before I appeared on the Sunday shows, I objected when Dan Pfeiffer wanted me to say Social Security didn’t contribute to the deficit. It wasn’t a main driver of our future deficits, but it did contribute. Pfeiffer said the line was a ‘dog whistle’ to the left, a phrase I had never heard before. He had to explain that the phrase was code to the Democratic base, signaling that we intended to protect Social Security.”

—- Former Obama Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, revealing that the White House wanted him to mislead the public on the deficit, debt and Social Security, in his newly published memoir, “Stress Test.”

Some ethics observations:

  • Sadly and predictably, the conservative news organizations are going bananas over this passage, while the liberal organizations—that is to say, all of the rest—are scrupulously ignoring it or trying to. Why sadly? Because in an ethical, objective journalistic culture, every reporter would be examining this admission, and critically.
  • Any journalist who is not bothered by this account has implicitly adopted the position that it is acceptable for the President of the United Sates and U.S. officials to mislead the public regarding crucial matters they have a right to know and understand. This is an unethical position for anyone, but especially for a journalist.
  • Of course, this is not the position of most left-oriented journalists. The position of these journalists is, apparently, that it is acceptable for Democratic Presidents of the United Sates and officials in Democratic administrations to mislead the public regarding crucial matters they have a right to know and understand, since they have exhibited no such tolerance when Republicans have occupied the White House.

Continue reading →

Abdication Of Duty: Now Fox News Is Reporting Miracles

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments
Halleluiah!!

Halleluiah!!

Anyone who follows news coverage from an objective perspective has to be grateful for Fox News, as unattractive an object of admiration as it is. The mainstream media partisan and political bias is palpable, and materially damaging to democracy, so Fox’s looking glass perspective does a great deal to relieve the imbalance by reporting legitimate stories that the other networks unconscionably bury. To CNN, a missing Malaysian airplane justifies scanty coverage of dangerous U.S. foreign policy fiascos, growing evidence of criminal political activity by the IRS, and California state senators under indictment. To CBS, a smoking gun memo showing the White House deliberately misleading the public and the press in the wake of the Benghazi violence isn’t worthy of reporting. Fox remedies these and more, every day. For the remedy to be effective, credible and respectable, however, the network has to avoid justifying its ideological critics’ attacks by behaving like a clown act. That shouldn’t be so hard, really. It only requires hewing to professional journalism standards. For Fox News, however, this is often hard, and sometimes, like this morning, too hard.

Fox and Friends decided to report a minor news event in Saugus, Massachusetts as a miracle. I’m sure this pleased Fox’s demographic of god-fearing Christians, but it is juvenile, unprofessional, silly and incompetent journalism, and proselytizing to boot.  After this, there is no reason not to expect that the next time Jesus’s face is said to appear on a tortilla, Fox will break into its programming with a BREAKING NEWS!! alert. This is supposed to be a morning news show, not the “Hour of Power” or the “700 Club.” Continue reading →