A new poll from The Hill:

A full 68 percent of voters consider the news media biased, the poll found. Most, 46 percent, believe the media generally favor Democrats, while 22 percent said they believe Republicans are favored, with 28 percent saying the media is reasonably balanced.

The share of voters who believe the media are too friendly with politicians is almost twice as large as those who find their coverage of politicians appropriate. Forty-four percent of voters assert the former; only 24 percent believe the latter.

The picture is not much brighter on the general question of ethics. Fifty-seven percent of voters think of the news media as either somewhat or very unethical, while only 39 percent see them as somewhat or very ethical.

This hasn’t improved at all from poll results earlier this year and last.

(more…)

Jennifer Haberkorn’s recent article in Politico, “Republican Party Eyes Choking Health Law Funding,” reveals far more about her merits as a journalist and health care “expert”, than it does about the GOP’s strategy of defunding Obamacare.  In anotherwise dreary and predictable piece, one passage stands out:

Thus far, Republican efforts to repeal or defund the law have fallen largely on deaf ears. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll released Thursday found that 35 percent of the public opposes the law, down from 41 percent last month. Those who oppose the law overwhelmingly support repealing it. Support for the health care plan has hovered at about 50 percent.”

One more time, please?  I may not be a journalist or a member of the juice box mafia, but this appears to me to be one of the more egregious examples of cherry picking that I’ve seen in the mainstream media in recent times.

According to Real Clear Politics’ Health Care Polling average- opposition to Obamacare is 14.8 points higher than support.

Polling Data

Not even the Democrat firm of Public Policy Polling (PPP) shows support for Obamacare greater than its opposition.  Indeed, the Kaiser Family Foundation poll is considered such an outlier that it is not even included in Real Clear Politics’ exhaustive sample of polls on the recently passed health care bill. (more…)

This is how low “profiles in courage” in Massachusetts’s U.S. Senate representation has fallen, and how bad the media-leftist complex has gotten. Today’s Washington Post carries an homage by columnist E.J. Dionne to Sen. John Kerry’s “passion” to push an “energy bill.”

The absurd, offending sentence is “Which brings us back to Kerry, who in a talk with me made no apologies for his eagerness to get an energy bill.” Well. Yes. He’s eager to tell you how his cap-and-trade global warming bill is an energy bill, rebranding it after pollster Stanley Greenberg instructed Democrats that “cap-and-trade” and “global warming” weren’t selling, and they had to rebrand it as “energy”.

Which calls into question the breathtaking courage, passion, etc. This is Kerry’s second cap-and-trade global warming bill just this Congress. After the first floundered, he came out muttering about how mean it is to describe the bill as cap-and-trade — the central component of both is cap-and-trade, of course — on the grounds that “I don’t know what cap-and-trade means” (he said that, incidentally, just after the Greenberg memo urging such abandonment). (more…)

The timing of this poll is quite suspect given the Arizona anti-illegal immigration law, and Mexican president Felipe Calderon’s America-scolding. But who are the real discriminators here?

An Associated Press-Univision Poll found that 61% of people overall said Latinos faced significant discrimination, compared with 52% who said blacks did and 50% who said women.

If you get a chance, watch some Univision or Telemundo. See any dark-skinned Latinos on their shows who aren’t buffoons, bad guys or maids?

The AP-Univision Poll compiled the views of 901 Latinos, which were compared with the results of a separate AP-GfK survey of the general population.

Did the Associated Press and Univision ask who they thought was doing the discriminating? As someone who lived in Los Angeles for over a decade, I’d be willing to bet a significant amount of people would say that Latinos were doing as much discriminating as anyone else. (more…)

Rasmussen has a fresh poll out on the topic of media bias. This is a poll of the public, not reporters. The poll makes some interesting comparison between the perceived influence of big media and big money in politics. Surprisingly, a majority think media bias is the bigger problem:

Fifty-five percent (55%) of U.S. voters continue to think that media bias is a bigger problem in politics today than big campaign contributions, identical to the finding in August 2008. Thirty-two percent (32%) say big contributions are the bigger problem, but that’s down four points from the previous survey.

There is a clear partisan split in the poll numbers:

Sixty-eight percent (68%) of Republicans and 62% of unaffiliated voters say media bias is the bigger problem in politics, a view shared by just 37% of Democrats.

This makes perfect sense given how the public views reporters:

Fifty-one percent (51%) of voters say the average reporter is more liberal than they are. Eighteen percent (18%) say that reporter is more conservative…

But here’s the part I find really interesting: (more…)

The blogosphere is abuzz with speculation about the real identity of the strange and wonderfully timely “Ellie Light,” President Obama’s No. 1 fan and apparently the owner of more residences than Donald Trump, John McCain and John Kerry combined.  Not to mention an indefatigable letter writer.

With Obama slumping in the polls, and reduced to more campaign-style appearances in front of friendly audiences in lieu of, you know, actually governing, the ethereal Ms. Light has taken pen in hand on multiple occasions to support her (?) fading Hope:

Courtesy of Patterico, a sample excerpt from her bountiful, revisionist, apologetic pen:

A year ago, if we had read in the paper that employers were hiring again, that health care legislation was proceeding without a bump, that Afghanistan suddenly became a nice place to take your kids, we would’ve known we were being lied to. Back then, we recognized that the problems Obama inherited as president wouldn’t go away overnight.

But today, the president is being attacked as if he were a salesman who promised us that our problems would wash off in the morning. He never made such a promise. It’s time for Americans to realize that governing is hard work, and that a president can’t just wave a magic wand and fix everything.

Why would anyone think Obama had a magic wand?  It’s not as if he’s ever made any extravagant promises: (more…)

After Senator-elect Scott Brown’s resounding win in Massachusetts, it is clear that when Americans have the facts, they make informed decisions and let their voices be heard about the important issues facing our country.  Our founders understood how important information is to our Republic.  Thomas Jefferson once said:

It is to me a new and consolatory proof that wherever the people are well-informed they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.

Last year, I started the Media Fairness Caucus (MFC) in Congress to help ensure that Americans stay well-informed and get the facts on important issues.  The purpose of the MFC is not to censor or condemn, but to encourage the media to adhere to the highest standards of reporting and provide the American people with the facts, balanced stories and fair coverage of the news.  The Caucus also points out examples of media bias and I present a “most biased media story of the week” award regularly on the House floor. (more…)