TV News LIES

Did the Washington Post and others underplay the story through fear of the News Corp chairman, or simply tin-eared judgment?

So now we have it: what appears to be hard, irrefutable evidence of Rupert Murdoch's ultimate and most audacious attempt – thwarted, thankfully, by circumstance – to hijack America's democratic institutions on a scale equal to his success in kidnapping and corrupting the essential democratic institutions of Great Britain through money, influence and wholesale abuse of the privileges of a free press.

Post-mortems of contemporary election coverage typically include regrets about horserace journalism, he-said-she-said stenography, and the lack of enlightening stories about the issues.

But according to longtime political observers Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, campaign coverage in 2012 was a particularly calamitous failure, almost entirely missing the single biggest story of the race: Namely, the radical right-wing, off-the-rails lurch of the Republican Party, both in terms of its agenda and its relationship to the truth.

On big news nights, when the sort of people who don’t watch Fox News every night are more likely to turn it on, the channel nearly always puts its best face forward. The real crazies aren’t invited.

The idiots and most grotesque race-baiters and conspiracy theorists and worst hacks wait patiently until the next morning, when Fox & Friends resumes as scheduled with its usual audience of credulous and furious old white people.

So last night we got Megyn Kelly, Bret Baier, Brit Hume and Chris Wallace hosting a roster of oddly reasonable pundits and analysts, from Juan Williams to Karl Rove and Joe Trippi.

he New York Times stood by its incoming chief Wednesday, even as questions about a BBC child sex abuse scandal followed him from one of Britain's most respected news organizations to one of America's.

But as new CEO Mark Thompson was getting support from his new bosses, the Times ombudsman questioned his fitness for the job. And in Britain, a lawmaker said he had more questions for Thompson. As Thompson prepares to take over as president of The New York Times next month, he has been put on the defensive about his final days as head of the BBC and the broadcaster's decision to kill what would have been a bombshell investigative story alleging the late Jimmy Savile, one of its biggest stars, had sexually abused up to 200 children.

In a study (PDF) published Monday, the group takes Fox News and The Wall Street Journal‘s editorial page to task for consistently misleading their audience on climate change.

Data collected over six months showed that Fox News was the worst offender on climate issues between the two, allowing misleading statements to permeate “93 percent” of its broadcasts on the subject from February to July 2012. The Journal‘s editorial page did not fare much better, however: the Union said “81 percent” of their climate coverage from August 2011 to July 2012 was “misleading.”

Fewer Americans are closely following political news now than in previous election years

Americans' distrust in the media hit a new high this year, with 60% saying they have little or no trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly. Distrust is up from the past few years, when Americans were already more negative about the media than they had been in years prior to 2004,