The other day, Fox and Friends ran a graphic illustrating a public opinion poll that didn't quite make sense--the numbers on the screen seemed to add up to 120 percent. In other words, an ambiguity at best and a typo at worst. But this booboo, of course, has led to an enormous hoohah from the usual Fox-bashing suspects, Media Matters, Huffington Post, etc. And so even the fair-minded Michael Calderone of Politico had to take note of the controversy.
But for her part, the Cable Gamer can sum up her reaction in three letters: B.F.D.
In the meantime, real media bias--not ambiguous calls, not innocent mistakes, but outright, premeditated bias--is so thick you can cut it with a knife. For example, on ABC World News last night, Jonathan Karl delivered a report on the Senate healthcare bill, which seems to be making some progress; to which Charlie Gibson responded, "At last some optimism about healthcare reform." That's pure pro-Democrat spin--if the Democrats are for it, it's good, and so we should be optimistic.
And this morning in the WaPo, a front page article on a drought in Australia, in which reporter Blaine Harden takes Aussies to task for not waking up to the importance of global warming. Harden loads up the rhetoric, declaring Australia to be "a crematorium for kangaroos, livestock, and farm towns." The Post is losing money, it is shutting down all its US bureaus, and yet it still scrapes up the money to send a reporter on a 22-hour flight Down Under to commit agitprop during the Copenhagen Summit.
Of course, MM and Huffpo won't worry about that sort of bias. They will cheer it.
