“Media bias” on The Daily Caller

Former Speaker Newt Gingrich’s blistering smack-down of CNN’s John King during last week’s South Carolina debate will go down as one of the most memorable moments of the 2012 campaign. Now comes the shocking revelation that Gingrich’s big applause line during said smack-down was false. Yes, “shocking revelation” is meant to be sarcastic. The applause line seemed obviously false to me on its face, as anyone could have figured out upon 10 seconds of reflection. No one seems to have invested those 10 seconds — certainly not my fellow Republicans, who were too caught up in their Newt sugar high to ponder the consequences of the inevitable crash. (more)

The reporters and editors at The Washington Post don’t care about millions of dead babies. But they sure get worked up about a single dead cat. (more)

Mitt Romney is “weird.” At least he is sometimes to some in the Obama campaign. He’s “slick,” with an “innate phoniness” and “personal awkwardness.” Oh, and just coincidentally, Romney’s a Mormon. (more)

If the mainstream media had their way, President John Kerry would likely be in the final year of his second term. Vice President John Edwards might be a leading candidate in the 2012 Democratic primary. In this alternate universe, John Kerry’s three-month stint in Vietnam would be a footnote in his storied rise to power. And most Americans wouldn’t know that he acquired three purple hearts without bleeding in battle. (more)

The post-mortem analyses of the recently concluded U.N. climate summit in Durban, South Africa continue to be churned out by pundits and reporters alike. The results have been spun both positively and negatively, yet some of the reporting has fallen short of even being factual. (more)

Unless the bastards come after me again, this is my last column on a national disgrace. (more)

You’re a network reporter. You’ve drawn the short straw and have to cover a prayer rally led by a conservative politician and involving representatives from a group whose social views you abhor. “Even some mainstream Christians are concerned about the event,” you report. To prove it, you could interview a Catholic priest or even a gay Episcopalian bishop. (more)

In covering the merciful end of Herman Cain’s campaign Saturday, an MSNBC contributor said that Cain had been a major player in the Republican Party but would now be relegated to a historical footnote. The truth is that Herman Cain was never a serious candidate nor a serious politician or representative of the Republican Party. He was a fringe, gaffe-prone candidate (albeit a charismatic one) from day one. (more)

“Nothing drives this blog quite as crazy as media organizations that don’t answer questions about their own journalism.” (more)

I have something to confess: I’m conservative, and I love The New York Times. (more)

Thank you, Politico, for dragging our already divided and depressed nation back to the “high-tech lynching” days of Justice Clarence Thomas’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings. (more)

The Iron Curtain was the symbol of the Cold War. It represented the Soviet Union’s attempts to keep the people of Eastern Europe isolated from the free thought and prosperity that capitalism brought to their neighbors. (more)

Ignore Ron Paul at your peril. (more)

Jack Shafer had his list ready. The celebrated media critic, who was laid off from Slate a few weeks ago then picked up by Reuters, was doing a live chat discussion on September 21 at the journalism site Poynter.org. A reader asked him about liberal media bias and what to do about it. Shafer, apparently off the top of his head, offered this: (more)

In an interview published Wednesday with the Media Research Center’s Brent Bozell, Rep. Joe Walsh, an Illinois Republican, accused the national media of protecting President Obama because he is African-American. (more)

I’ve long thought there was something amiss about how news outlets seem almost hyper-focused on reporting any potential conflicts of interest. Not that there’s anything wrong with identifying those conflicts, but I think their importance is often over-played to the detriment of getting to the crux of issues. (more)

According to Erik Wemple, The Washington Post’s new media writer, Sarah Palin is a hypocrite. The former Alaska governor supports abstinence education, yet according to tabloid reporter Joe McGinniss, in 1988 Palin had a one-night stand with a basketball player. Palin was not married at the time, although she was dating Todd Palin. Put all this together, writes Wemple, and Palin is “fair game.” His reasoning: “Hypocrisy is a quality that must be exposed in our political leaders: If Palin backs abstinence-only education and shuns talk of contraception and the like, then we are entitled to know whether her own lifestyle aligned with her rhetoric. And so we’re learning about Palin’s alleged Reagan-era sex life.” (more)

Here’s a dirty little secret about life for politicos in D.C.: We’re all friends here. Republicans, Democrats, Hill staffers, consultants, lobbyists, journalists — we all drink at the same bars, gossip about the same people, shop at the same grocery stores. Sure, at work we’re policy wonks and experts on talking points, but off the clock we unwind over the same drinks and drunkenly deal with life’s bigger issues like our fantasy football draft picks. We’re actual people who think for ourselves. (more)

The incestuous world of D.C./New York journalism is in shock. Slate, the redundant liberal website owned by The Washington Post, has laid off four writers. This comes after The Post announced another disastrous quarter, with a 13 percent loss in online revenues. (more)

A reporter’s job is to report the news. This includes determining what news is worth covering. But should reporters be the sole arbiters of what should be news? (more)