Articles

14th Aug, 2006 11:35am
     NBC’s Jim Goldman seized on BP’s (NYSE: BP) oil pipeline troubles to forecast significantly higher gasoline prices. But the estimate Goldman gave is at the more pessimistic end of the range that oil analysts are giving.       “With gasoline prices expected to soar past $3.50-a-gallon as the summer driving season peaks,” Goldman lamented on the August 12 “Nightly News,” the calls for congressional and state investigations into BP’s pipeline maintenance “may be too little too late for…
11th Aug, 2006 12:49pm
     The mainstream media, bolstered by liberal think tanks, already see global warming as caused by humans to be settled, incontrovertible science. Could the debate over the effect that immigration has on Americans’ jobs be the next case the media pronounces closed?        That’s the impression The Washington Post’s Kim Hart gave readers in her August 11 story as she portrayed a liberal think tank as a neutral, “unbiased” observer of American social and political issues.       “High levels of…
11th Aug, 2006 12:17pm
Friday's lead editorial on the London plot opens with outrage that sounds a little contrived: "It comes like a punch to the gut, at times like these, when our leaders blatantly use the nation's trauma for political gain. We never get used to this. It never feels like business as usual."On Wednesday, when the administration already knew that British agents were rounding up suspects in what they believed was a plot to blow up planes en route to the United States, Vice President Dick Cheney had a…
11th Aug, 2006 11:56am
Chief political reporter Adam Nagourney's "ArrestsBolster G.O.P. Bid to Claim Security as Issue" suggests Republicans, but not liberal Democrats, are playing politics with the news of the foiled terror plot in Britain. "The arrests were announced less than 24 hours after Vice President Dick Cheney and other Republican officials suggested that Mr. Lieberman's defeat reflected the world view of a Democratic Party that was not prepared to lead the nation in such dangerous times. "Mr. Cheney, who a…
11th Aug, 2006 11:48am
The foiled terror plot in Britain leads Friday's paper.Alan Cowell and Dexter Filkins come up with this dubious explanation: "This is the latest in a series of conspiracies apparently rooted in the disaffection of young, British-born Muslims, many of Pakistani descent, who cast themselves as part of a jihadist struggle against Britain, which they see as an outrider of the United States in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Lebanon."Noel Sheppard at Newsbusters points out "the reference to Lebanon was…
10th Aug, 2006 5:34pm
     What did a Happy Meal ever do to Melanie Warner? In March the Business & Media Institute showed you how The New York Times advertising reporter found nothing funny in humorous beer ads. Now she’s at it again, pooh-poohing the toys that come with the child-sized meals sold at McDonald’s (NYSE: MCD)       As BMI documented then, Warner penned a two-column story, “Critics Say Beer Spots Exploit Loopholes” in the Business Day section of the March 29 paper. “The beer code has loopholes that…
10th Aug, 2006 5:04pm
     NBC swallowed claims from a study that criticized online alcohol vendors, though very few teens actually buy liquor online. What’s more, Chief Consumer Correspondent Lea Thompson failed to include any critics who would argue the survey paid for by the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America (WSWA) was biased in favor of its pro-regulation agenda.     “According to a new survey to be released tomorrow” Thompson noted on the August 9 “Nightly News,” about “one in 10 teenagers have an…
10th Aug, 2006 4:27pm
Neil MacFarquhar's glossyMonday profile of Hezbollah's terrorist leader Sheikh Nasrallahincluded this description: "He always calls Israel 'the Zionist entity,' maintaining that all Jewish immigrants should return to their countries of origin and that there should be one Palestine with equality for Muslims, Jews and Christians." Wednesday night on the O'Reilly Factor, Bernard Goldberg, the former CBS News reporter who confronted his network's liberal bias, bashed the gullible Times profile and…
10th Aug, 2006 3:11pm
Thursday's front-page news story by Helene Cooper, "Rice's Hurdles On Middle East Begin at Home," reads more like a "news analysis" than what is supposedly a straight news story. It trackswith Cooper'sprevious Condi-critical stories, including one July 31 in which she wrote that U.S. efforts to delay a ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel "left the impression that Ms. Rice and the Bush administration were willing to stomach the killing of innocent children to reach their larger aims."Today she…
10th Aug, 2006 3:07pm
Brenda Goodman follows up on her story yesterday on the loss in the Democratic primary by inflammatory Rep. Cynthia McKinney of Georgia, but lets her allies blame the Republicans in "Democrat Says G.O.P. Voters Led to Her Loss." As she did yesterday,Goodman ignores McKinney's nutty statements alleging 9-11 conspiracies and her anti-Israel animus, saying today only that many new district voters "were not impressed by her confrontational and occasionally erratic style."Then it's on to blaming the…