Reports of Racial Disparities in Covid Vaccines Distort Science
Much of the scientific journalism on US Covid vaccines has been inaccurate, misleading, fearmongering and irresponsible.
Distorting the Polling on Tea Party Supporters
Is theTea Party movement actually more politically diverse than the “liberal media” would have you believe? Andrew Malcolm, a blogger for the L.A. Times who used to be Laura Bush’s press secretary, thinks so. He wrote yesterday (4/5/10) about a pair of polls that came out about the Tea Party movement: For upwards of 12 […]
Without Info on Oil Price Non-Effect, Offshore Drilling Reports Are Just Gas
Implicit in much coverage of the offshore drilling debate is that such oil has the potential to lower gasoline prices. The L.A. Times‘ report (3/30/10) on the Obama administration’s new offshore drilling plan provided this context: The announcement will come in the run-up to summer driving season, as gasoline prices have begun a national march […]
L.A. Local News: Next to None
The Los Angeles Times reports(3/12/10)on a new study of local news from theUSC Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism’s Norman Lear Center. The findings are hardly surprising: There is almost no local political coverage on TV news. As the Times notes, “An average half-hour newscast devoted just 22 seconds to government issues, including city budgets, […]
LAT: ‘Risky’ Tax Hikes on Wealthy
A headline in today’s Los Angeles Times (11/20/09): “Democrats Risk Taxing the Wealthy for Healthcare.” The paper explains: Embracing the progressive–and sometimes politically risky–principle that the cost of carrying out public policies should fall to the well-off more than the disadvantaged, both the House and Senate bills would place new taxes on the wealthy to […]
Media to Obama: Less Talk, More War
From ABC World News, 11/11/09: CHARLIE GIBSON: We understand he’s raising new questions about a number of plans that are in front of him. What new questions are there to be asked after all this time? MARTHA RADDATZ: Well, you would think he’d be through with the questions, Charlie. Doyle McManus, Los Angeles Times (11/15/09): […]
Drone Strikes Change Anonymous Washington Debate
The Los Angeles Times (11/2/09) gives readers a mostly upbeat account about the use of unmanned drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan—weapons that have killed hundreds in Pakistan in recent years. But Times reporter Julian Barnes tells us their popularity with U.S. military officials has “changed the nature of the current policy debate in Washington.” The […]
Searching for the ‘Middle’ in Afghanistan Debate
In most policy debates, the media preference is for a solution in the “center,” whatever they define that to be. A Los Angeles Times headline today on the Beltway debate on Afghanistan reads: “Obama mulls middle ground in Afghanistan war strategy.” Like the healthcare debate, the media’s version of “the middle” usually means something well […]
Media Welcome for ‘Baroque Conspiracy Theories’ Not Unprecedented
What “surprises” Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik (8/30/09) more than this summer’s news full of “baroque conspiracy theories” and “weepy hysteria” is “the idea that these are somehow unprecedented.” Hiltzik looks back to an earlier era of supposed presidential “socialism” in the U.S. to see such current claims as “merely the latest examples of […]
LA Times Acknowledges Gaping Hole in Media’s Healthcare Debate
An LA Times column today cited FAIR’s petition demanding that the TV networks include single-payer in their coverage of the healthcare reform debate, acknowledging that there is a “gaping hole in much of the media coverage—caused by the failure to investigate practices around the rest of the world, particularly European-style, single-payer programs.” The Times‘ James […]
Domestic Honduras PR’s ‘Amazing Job’ Misinforming
The L.A. Times has published a commentary from Center for Economic and Policy Research co-director Marc Weisbrot (7/23/09) furthering recent exposés on the damaging influence of U.S. lobbyists hired by unlawful regimes throughout the world. Under a headline about “The High-Powered Hidden Support for Honduras’ Coup,” Weisbrot invites us to meet Lanny Davis, Washington lawyer […]
The L.A. Times’ Guide to Sexism and ‘Nerds’
Blogging about a male-only film promotion contest at San Diego’s Comic-Con, Charlie Jane Anders (io9.com, 6/15/09) also notices the “L.A. Times published an insulting ‘guide for girls‘” about the convention–which starts out by assuring readers that contrary to what you might believe, the event “is not just for nerdy guys anymore. And it’s not all […]
Spinning the Sotomayor Abortion Debate in the NYT
Charlie Savage did some good reporting on the Bush signing statements, but his front-page story in today’s New York Times on reproductive rights groups’ reaction to Sotomayor is way off course. His lead explains that abortion rights advocates are worried about Sotomayor, because “when she has written opinions that touched tangentially on abortion disputes, she […]
L.A. Times: Transforming Reform into ‘Reform’
Arianna Huffington (Huffington Post, 5/25/09) is offering, as “a particularly egregious example” of corporate media as “enabler of the transformation of real reform into D.C. ‘reform,’” a May 23 L.A. Times editorial she thinks “might as well have been written by industry lobbyists (the way many ‘reform’ bills are).” After her initial reaction to the […]
Curious Polling and Obama’s Worrisome Popularity
Two newspapers have flagged some concerns about Barack Obama’s popularity, citing a new poll to raise questions about the public’s enthusiasm for White House policies so far. Both accounts, though, seem to try to hard to stretch the rather awkward poll results to match their arguments. In the Los Angeles Times (5/3/09), Peter Nicholas noted […]
Listening to Limbaugh
In his op-ed “Take the Limbaugh Challenge” (L.A. Times, 3/29/09), conservative writer Andrew Klavan states as a “certainty” that L.A. Times readers don’t listen to Rush Limbaugh’s show: If you are reading this newspaper, the likelihood is that you agree with the Obama administration’s recent attacks on conservative radio talker Rush Limbaugh. That’s the likelihood; […]
Black Newspapers’ ‘Heroic History’ Imperiled
Reporting that “L.A. Times blogger Andrew Malcolm started a web freakout” by suggesting “that the White House was blocking press access to a ceremony with the National Newspaper Publisher’s Association,” American Prospect blogger Adam Serwer (3/20/09) writes that, “in fact, part of the ceremony was an exclusive interview which naturally, the NNPA didn’t want other […]
LAT False Equivalence: Michael Moore = Limbaugh
Over on Media Matters’ County Fair blog (3/12/09), Jamison Foser asks, “Is there any major-newspaper reporter who is more consistently wrong than Andrew Malcolm?” The latest gaffe by the Laura Bush flak-turned-L.A. Times writer comes in response to filmmaker Michael Moore’s explaining what he sees as the difference between Democratic framing of Rush Limbaugh as […]
I Couldn’t Eat Another Bite, I’m…98 Percent Empty?
Under the Onion-ready headline “Obama Calls for Earmark Reform, Signs Earmark-Laden Spending Bill,” (3/12/09), the L.A. Times‘ James Oliphant and Christi Parsons begin their story: President Obama railed against pork barrel projects on Wednesday. Then he signed a massive spending bill stuffed with them. I’m not sure what the cut-off for something being “stuffed” with […]
L.A. Times on the ‘Controversial’ Budget
Today’s L.A. Times report (2/26/09) on the White House budget includes this curious warning: The document–which included broad goals and few line items–laid down controversial markers on almost every major issue facing the country. Among the immediate budget winners are the middle class and the poor, whose taxes will be eased. Among the losers are […]
