Quote of the Day, Those Journalism Jobs ARe Probably Sour Anyway edition.

I disagree with this.

“There’s something in the DNA of liberals that makes them want to go into jobs like the arts, journalism and academia more so than conservatives,” Mr. Groseclose said. “Even if you’re just trying to maximize profits by offering an alternative point of view, it’s hard to find conservative reporters. So it’s natural the media is more liberal.”

Continue reading Quote of the Day, Those Journalism Jobs ARe Probably Sour Anyway edition.

LIBRE and media bias.

Just a reminder about what media bias looks like. This is the Washington Post’s description of LIBRE, an avowedly conservative/libertarian group that works on outreach to Latinos.

For Republicans, the road to warming the hearts and winning the votes of Latinos may begin at a Las Vegas flea market.

On a recent morning, inside the Eastern Indoor Swapmeet Las Vegas, a group funded by the billionaire Koch brothers helped 250 Latinos — some of them illegal immigrants — pass the Nevada driver’s test.

Continue reading LIBRE and media bias.

Gov. Scott Walker (R, Wisconsin) and the Washington Post’s institutional bias.

You’ve no doubt already heard that Scott Walker is, yea, indeed, running for President – with a hundred ‘Throne of Skulls’ jokes already blossoming on Twitter – but I don’t want to hit that.  I want to hit a problem that I have with the Washington Post’s reporting on the subject.  This passage, in particular:

[Scott Walker’s] decision to take on public employee unions in Wisconsin in early 2009 created huge protests around the state Capitol building in Madison and left the state deeply polarized around his leadership…. That anger resulted in a recall election in 2012, which Walker survived. He went on to win his reelection campaign last November by a comfortable margin, and his three victories in four years have made him a hero among many conservatives.

Continue reading Gov. Scott Walker (R, Wisconsin) and the Washington Post’s institutional bias.

The New York Times’ Everyday Americans?

If you saw this “If I were President” article in the NYT that purported to offer up helpful suggestions from non-pundits and political/media types on how to fix the country, you probably rolled your eyes.  Certainly FrankJ and Jon Henke did on Twitter (H/T), and for good reason: as ideas go, said ideas were… ah, largely lacking.  And kind of provincial.  Gimmicky, even.  Certainly mostly a narrow focus.

But that’s not the point of this post.  No, the point of this post is to introduce you to who the New York Times consider to be “a range of Americans who don’t labor in politics or the media” – largely because if people just let the New York Times get away with claiming nonsense with a straight face then they’ll never stop doing that.

So: let us look at these twelve supposedly representative Americans (one of which, by the way, is probably actually a Brit):

Name Affiliation Noteworthy because?
Michael J Sandel Liberal Harvard Professor/HuffPo
Sharon Olds Liberal “Poet Rebuffs Laura Bush”
Andrew Weil Liberal Alt-med, likes Obamacare
Danny Meyer Liberal Obama supporter/restauranteur
James Q Wilson Conservative Professor/Academic
Jennifer Egan Liberal Author / Thinks Bush ‘criminal’
Str. Mary Walgenbach Liberal Antiwar loon
Geoffrey Canada Liberal All-right school activist
Patricia Ryan Madson Can’t tell Improv advocate
Stephen Hannock Kinda Fascist* Artist
James Dyson Liberal** Big-government industrialist
Neil deGrasse Tyson Liberal PETA-friendly astrophysicist
*Seriously, read his entry.
**By our standards (Brit).

Continue reading The New York Times’ Everyday Americans?

NYT uses bad guesser Jack Bass to attack Nikki Haley.

I will admit that the New York Times largely did not attack South Carolina governor Nikki Haley (R) all that harshly in this article; in fact, they said some things that were actually complimentary (given that the governor is openly going after entrenched Republican interests in SC, that’s probably not a surprise). But they couldn’t quite resist playing silly games by getting local liberal political flack Jack Bass to say “Her understanding of the role of state government appears rather limited” – and presenting Bass as an authority. Here’s a radical notion for the NYT: if you simply must use a liberal to attack a conservative, could you at least mention the following? Continue reading NYT uses bad guesser Jack Bass to attack Nikki Haley.

#rsrh Bias Watch: “Bias Watch: The Palin Emails.”

…I was going to try for the same pseudo-legal blather that Eric Wimple was using to try to pooh-pooh the idea that the Washington Post really needed to get its readership to paw through Sarah Palin’s emails, but fortunately I realized that all I actually wanted to say was “Eric Wimple is being a schmuck here.”

Well.

Eric Wimple is being a schmuck here.

Yeah, that’s a lot more straightforward. Continue reading #rsrh Bias Watch: “Bias Watch: The Palin Emails.”

R.S. McCain in Kentucky already finding media bias in Sparkman killing.

Oh, you’re going to just love this one.  Robert Stacy McCain went down to the site of the Sparkman murder in Kentucky to do some on-the-scene reporting, and he’s already found a situation where an Obama supporter and Democrat who was skeptical of the media treatment of this story got turned into a stereotypical government-hater by a reporter.

Oops.

He’s got video of that interview, so click on over to check it out.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Unintended Kinsley Gaffe of the day.

From this Politico article on recent media failures (via Hot Air Headlines):

“For Glenn Beck to devote 45 minutes of his show to ACORN and Van Jones says more about his news judgment than mine,” said Dean Baquet, Washington bureau chief of the New York Times.

Given that it can be safely assumed that Glenn Beck viewers were not surprised at either the Van Jones resignation or the Senate’s defunding of ACORN, and that it can be assumed that many New York Times readers were surprised – which, to be blunt (and cruel) about it, means that the former were better informed than the latter – well, put it any way that you like, Baquet.  You’re still suffering from the comparison.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.