Los Angeles Times

The L.A. Times' Rosa Brooks has done it again, taken a serious subject and made an uninformed romp of it. One wonders how the old Georgian lady seen in news photos standing wounded among the ruins of her apartment building, or the Georgian Mother running down the street, infant in her arms, trying to escape Russian tanks might feel about the humor with which Brooks brings to bear upon their…

[**UPDATE below**] The Los Angeles Times is still fighting for their man, Barack Obama. Last June, when their man's poll numbers looked groovy, the Times proudly trumpeted their presidential poll results with a just-the-facts headline, "Obama holds 12-point lead over McCain, poll finds." But now the paper's candidate of choice is in trouble. A new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll shows John…

At least, that's what James Rainey would like you to believe. Further review of Rainey's piece shows that the examples he highlights of supposedly equal and fawning treatment of John McCain and Barack Obama is not so equal.In fact, so ridiculous are the comparisons, I thought for a moment  the joke was on me--that Rainey's piece was a send-up of local media, a SNL-style parody.But there's no joke…

Yesterday, in a stinging indictment of his Old Media colleagues' la-la-la treatment of the story of John Edwards's affair with Rielle Hunter, Los Angeles Times columnist Tim Rutten asserted that Edwards "may have ended his public life but he certainly ratified an end to the era in which traditional media set the agenda for national political journalism." I'll get to Rutten's mostly perceptive…

How do you make the foreclosure crisis seem even scarier? Add in a potentially deadly virus. CBS's "The Early Show," reported August 7 that a new stronger strain of the West Nile virus could spread across the country with help from the neglected pools found in foreclosed homes in California. "Apparently ... as more and more homes are passing into foreclosure and there are many, and many of…

Former Chicago Alderwoman Arenda Troutman pleaded guilty yesterday (8/6/08) to felony counts of mail fraud and tax fraud. She faces up to 5 years in prison. The Chicago Tribune reported the story, and the Los Angeles Times published an edited version of the Trib's report.Can you guess the one word that you won't find in either story? "Democrat." According to Wikipedia, "In 2006, Troutman was…

Los Angeles Times's Tim Rutten is at it again. In an op-ed in today's paper (Wed. 8/6/08), Rutten buttresses a new book by author Ron Suskind and asserts that "Vice President Dick Cheney and his inner circle long have insisted" that Iraq was directly connected to the September 11 attacks.Rutten's claim is an easy one to debunk. Here's Vice President Cheney in a Meet the Press interview with Tim…

E-mailer and frequent NB commenter Gary Hall sent me a link to a July 30 LA Times article about how worldwide AIDS deaths are down 10%. In discussing the improvement, it's hysterical in one sense, but very sad in another, to watch how reporter Thomas H. Maugh II studiously avoided using the word "abstinence" (the A-word), which does not appear even once in his entire piece. Just to be sure no…

UPDATE, Aug. 6 -- The media fact-checker overview begins here, and continues below the fold:"..... all the oil that they’re talking about getting off drilling" Obama refers to is NOT just the 200,000 additional barrels obtainable from the "Pacific, Atlantic and eastern Gulf regions." Republican proposals also include Alaska, shale oil, and tar sands.Just including Alaska coastal at very…

The L.A.Times's Andrew Malcolm is so over come by Obamamania that he sees connections to his messiah everywhere, even in hospitals separated by hundreds of miles, from patients admitted days apart, with maladies and injuries that are completely dissimilar. And not just with ordinary everyday patients in those hospitals, but with two star studded actors who ended up in hospitals, one in Chicago…

If a journalist ever wanted to exhibit her spectacular ignorance and bias, the Los Angeles Times' Johanna Neuman performed with flying colors. In a recent blog post about the surprise congratulatory phone call from the Bush family to Rush Limbaugh's radio show, Neuman offered,We imagine the reason the tape has not yet popped up on YouTube is that is was singularly lacking in the biting, mean-…

On Friday, NewsBusters wondered how much attention media would pay to the Republican revolt that occurred after Speaker Pelosi adjourned the House for a five week vacation without allowing a vote on offshore oil drilling.It turns out that if you rely on the evening news programs of the three broadcast networks, you didn't hear about this extraordinary event at all (photo courtesy AP). And, if you…