An in-depth study, analysis or review exploring the media
Special Reports
30th May, 2012 2:29pm
Executive SummaryIn a study of nearly three months of network and news magazine
coverage, the Media Research Center found that despite the suggestion
that the national media's only bias is in favor of "a good story," the
Whitewater story indictments, convictions, Senate hearings, and all
is still the story reporters love to hate. The lack of coverage is
matched by the disparaging tone members of the media have displayed
toward Whitewater over the past few months. A representative sampling…
30th May, 2012 1:39pm
Executive SummaryOn May 25, after months of White House delays over declassification,
a special House task force led by Reps. Christopher Cox (R-Calif.) and
Rep. Norman Dicks (D-Wash.) released its final report on the Chinese
government’s theft of nuclear warhead and missile secrets. But it made
almost no difference in the calculated indifference to the Chinese
espionage story at ABC, CBS, and NBC. NBC Nightly News ultimately aired only two stories on the Cox committee findings, while ABC’s…
30th May, 2012 1:15pm
Executive SummaryOver the last two years, network TV news viewers have been inundated
with tragic images of students running away from gunfire. With every
new incident, the networks have blamed guns, and wonder if more gun
control laws aren’t an obvious solution. In a study of 653 morning and
evening news stories on ABC, CBS, CNN, and NBC from July 1, 1997 to
June 30, 1999, MRC Senior Media Analyst Geoffrey Dickens documents how:
1. TV News Has Chosen Sides. Stories advocating more gun
control…
29th May, 2012 4:58pm
Executive SummaryFive years ago, CNN became the first U.S.-based news organization
with a full-time news bureau in communist Cuba in nearly 30 years. As
an independent and highly-regarded news organization, CNN’s mission was
to transmit the reality of Castro’s dictatorship to American audiences.
In 1997, then-White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry told reporters
that “reporting of truth about the conditions in Cuba would
further...peaceful, democratic change in Cuba.” CNN officials also had…
29th May, 2012 4:21pm
Executive SummaryIt's puzzled pundits and confounded commentators: Why have many
Republicans been eager to embrace the candidacy of Sen. John McCain,
who makes a great show of the fact that he's proposed the smallest tax
cut of any major Republican presidential candidate in a generation?
Could it be because the national media have portrayed tax cuts as all
risk and no reward?
To shed some light on the issue, the Media Research Center's Free
Market Project reviewed every story on…
29th May, 2012 3:07pm
Executive SummaryAccording to a growing number of journalists, the media’s liberal
bias — a trait that most reporters refuse to acknowledge — is no longer
a problem. Pointing to the commercial success of conservative talk
radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, plus the Fox News
Channel’s dominance of cable TV, many media liberals insist the news
industry has all of the fairness and balance it needs.
“It took conservatives a lot of hard and steady
work to push the media…
29th May, 2012 1:27pm
Executive SummaryWe would like to think that the Cold War is over. But for the
people of communist Cuba and the people who’ve fled it, the Cold War
remains. In all of the coverage and controversy over the arrival and
seizure of six-year-old Elian Gonzalez, the media have taken the stark
contrast between American liberty and Cuban tyranny and muddled it to
the point that much of the American public thinks Cuba is no different
than America, or worse, that Cuba is better than America…
29th May, 2012 12:56pm
Executive SummaryIn 1984, Professor Bill Adams found that the networks provided
unequal treatment of the two conventions during their prime time
coverage. Correspondents frequently labeled Republican politicians as
ideologues, using labels such as "right wing" and "far right" much more
than they called Democrats "left wing" and "far left." In on-air
interviews, reporters frequently challenged Republicans with questions
drawn from the liberal agenda, but rarely challenged Democrats…
29th May, 2012 11:42am
Executive SummaryLiberals have unloaded on President Bush’s proposed tax
reduction package, condemning it as a risky scheme and a massive,
budget-busting giveaway to the rich. Tax cut proponents have countered
that by various historical measures Bush’s tax cut is hardly excessive,
and argued it provides a greater percentage tax reduction to lower-
and middle-income households than it does to wealthier families.
So which set of opinions has held sway on the three evening…
24th May, 2012 2:10pm
Executive SummaryFor years, liberal environmentalists have insisted that only tough
regulations on economic activity can prevent the climate catastrophe of
human-induced global warming. So far, these activists’ biggest policy
success has been the 1997 Kyoto Protocols, which would have forced the
United States to cut industrial emissions to seven percent below 1990
levels, or 30 percent lower than current levels. But if the
gloom-and-doom predictions of environmental activists’ are exaggerated…