Europe

NPR's Philip Reeves slanted towards the Occupy Wall Street on Wednesday's All Things Considered as he played up the "huge outcry" over St. Paul Cathedral in London's dispute with the left-leaning movement, which has an encampment outside its doors. Reeves spotlighted a local official who "called St. Paul's a 'national laughing stock,'" and omitted sound bites from the opponents of the movement…

Islamists firebombed a satirical newspaper in France named Charlie Hebdo. Time magazine, on its “Global Spin” blog, uncorked outrage – against the newspaper. Time’s Paris bureau chief Bruce Crumley blamed the “insolent” newspaper for the bombing. The headline was “Firebombed French Paper Is No Free Speech Martyr.” Ace of Spades says the URL suggests the original title may have been even worse: "…

While "Occupy Wall Street" is spreading to "more than a thousand countries," a key liberal supporter of the movement has been enjoying the past few days in the birthplace of the radical French Revolution, where she's expanding... her media empire. Arianna Huffington is in Paris today announcing Le Huffington Post, a French-language version of The Huffington Post set to launch later this year…

European-based New York Times reporter Nicholas Kulish filed a big-think off-lead Wednesday from Madrid, “As Scorn for Vote Grows, Protests Surge Around Globe,” and became the latest Times reporter to suggest that the rioters who burned and looted shops in London for shoes and smart phones were actually impoverished outcasts engaged in political protest. Hundreds of thousands of disillusioned…

Three years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, what was the fourth-largest investment bank in the US, the Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, Bank of England, and Japanese and Swiss central banks moved last week to avert a liquidity crisis in European banks struggling to deal with the failing Greek economy, leaving American investors with portfolios of Greek bonds worried. Do you think…

Fareed Zakaria's desire to give power to all countries except the one he currently resides - the United States! - is nothing less than appalling. On the CNN program bearing his name Sunday, Zakaria actually said, "It might be necessary to make clear that Christine Lagarde would be the last non-Chinese head of the [International Monetary Fund]" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

The headline to a New York Times editorial Saturday sounds like a conservative parody of liberal sanctimony: “The Enlightened Want to Be Taxed.” The content is no better, another boost of the paper's favorite multi-billionaire Warren “tax me more” Buffett, whose crusade was launched on the Times opinion page August 15, while offensively crediting the left-wing threat of property destruction as…

CNN's Fareed Zakaria got more than he bargained for in his Sunday interview with guest Donald Rumsfeld. As he pushed the former Secretary of Defense on America's need to cut military spending, the "GPS" host blushed when Rumsfeld smartly said, "There are people who think we're living in the post-American world, to coin a phrase. There are people who believe that we should step back and lead…

On Tuesday, NPR ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos reached back to a July 26 story on the horrific shootings in Norway. Correspondent Sylvia Poggioli suggested the shooter, Anders Breivik “once belonged to the ultra-right Progress Party.” Schumacher-Matos lamented the “ultra-right” label, and asked Poggioli to explain herself. He called it "ultra-wrong." It quickly became clear that Poggioli…

The New York Times maintained its strange hostility toward center-right French president (and former Bush ally) Nicolas Sarkozy in Steven Erlanger Tuesday’s story from Paris, “Sarkozy Seen as Baiting Socialists With Budget Role.” Erlanger implied that Sarkozy’s standard political appeals for deficits and balanced budgets (i.e. “the right’s obsession”) were somehow unfair to the opposition…

On Thursday's All Things Considered, NPR's Lauren Frayer emphasized the trend towards secularization in Spain during a report on Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the country for World Youth Day. Just as she did almost a week earlier, Frayer couldn't find any local supporters of the Pope, and completely misreported how the Catholic Church extended pastoral support to women who had abortions. Host…

BELFAST, Northern Ireland -- Some of those caught looting stores last week in Britain were asked why they did it. Four teenagers explained to Sky News that they viewed it as "a shopping spree." One teen blamed the government: "They say (they) are going to help us but I don't see any of it. There has to be more opportunities and jobs. Help us at least and then maybe everyone will settle down…

NPR pretended that there wasn't a single supporter of Pope Benedict XVI in Spain on Friday's Morning Edition, choosing to devote an entire report on the "many people are grumbling at the cost" of the upcoming papal visit to the country. Correspondent Lauren Frayer not only failed to mention the 428,000 people from around the world who are registered for the World Youth Day event with the Pope,…

As rioters in England set buildings aflame, hurl stones into local shops, and rip flat screen TVs off of store walls, Reuters editor-at-large Chrystia Freeland viewed Prime Minister David Cameron's fiscal policies as the "really radical" culprit. "I think that this is the result of – directly the result of – the really radical austerity program that the Cameron government is imposing,"…