Gabrielle Giffords

Palm Beach Post columnist Jose Lambiet (photo) is so desperate to defend the indefensible that he is now basically telling his readers that what they saw they didn't see. In this case, Lambiet is claiming that his column wasn't political even though that is exactly what it was from playing the class resentment card against the parents of  neurosurgeon Michael Lemole who treated Represenstative…

A recently-released analysis by the Pew Research Center reveals some interesting facts about the online conversation regarding the Tucson massacre. Most notably, it lends statistical weight to the claim that the left accused its ideological opponents of fostering a "climate of hate" to a far greater degree than did the right. Though that may not be altogether surprising, the Pew study also…

After days of relentless attacks by media across the fruited plain, Sarah Palin's unfavorable rating hit an all-time high this week. A look at the assault by television and radio news organizations since bullets were fired in Tucson will give you an idea how the press accomplished their mission (image of Palin was found via a Google search and was not created by NewsBusters or the Media…

Two of the conservative opinion world’s heavyweights, humorist P.J. O’Rourke and Wall Street Journal writer James Taranto, both have responded in passionate, even moral fashion to the New York Times’s often disgraceful coverage of the Tucson shootings, in which six people were killed and Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was severely injured. In their view, the Times used the tragedy to play…

Ever since the Tucson shooting, MSNBC's Chris Matthews has been on a tirade accusing conservatives of creating a climate of hate that led to an attempt on Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords' life. Yet on Wednesday's Hardball, Matthews himself insulted GOP Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, as he blared that she was: "a screamer, and in many cases pretty close to a nut case." What was…

From the files of clippings I've saved over the years, one of my favorite headlines -- "Prison populations, costs climbing: $40b a year spent on inmates despite falling crime rate," as published in The Boston Globe on July 28, 2003. Yes -- "despite". Not the only time I've seen a headline along these lines, though less often nowadays, its idiocy becoming too obvious to ignore. As if to…

In a fine example of the new civility at MSNBC, Lawrence O'Donnell on Tuesday actually yelled at an Arizona Congressman who didn't agree with him about the need for gun control following the shootings in Tucson. The discussion on "The Last Word" really got heated after the host made the case to Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) that additional security at Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' (D-Ariz.) Congress…

Metaphors are only acceptable in the hands of trained New York Times journalists: “Republicans say they do not intend to change the name of the proposal, titled the Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act. Some Democrats have suggested that the ‘job-killing’ language was particularly offensive after the shootings, but Republicans rejected that notion.” -- Congressional reporter Carl…

 On Saturday, both ABC and NBC ran stories fretting over the Crossroads of the West Gun Show that was held over the weekend in Tucson, Arizona. On ABC, at one point, correspondent David Wright seemed surprised that the large number of people showing up at the event were customers instead of protesters. After relaying that some members of Congress want more gun control laws and cautioning…

On Monday, Keith Olbermann cherry-picked a Daily Kos/PPP poll to bash the Tea Party as a violent threat to America's elected officials. On the following day's "Countdown," the MSNBCer misrepresented an Opinion Research/CNN poll to tie Sarah Palin to the Tucson shootings (video follows with transcript and commentary):

OK, so conservatives have to be accused of fostering hatred with our alleged vitriol, the kind of vitriol which fuels the flames of violence, like we witnessed in Tucson except – well, except there wasn’t, and isn’t, a shred of evidence that the killer was influenced by any conservatives since a) he didn’t listen to or watch conservative programming and b) isn’t a conservative. There is the…

Almost immediately after the shooting in Tucson that killed six people and left Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords severely wounded, the media establishment linked the attack with a debate about “civility,” suggesting an association between Jared Loughner’s rampage and the words and phrases used in national political debates. Many of these network news stories offered ambiguous…

On Tuesday's CBS Early Show, congressional correspondent Nancy Cordes reported on Sarah Palin's first interview since the Tucson shooting: "She accused the Left and the news media of trying to destroy her message, trying to destroy her, said she was being accused of being an accessory to murder." Cordes forgot to mention her role in furthering those accusations against the former Alaska…

On Saturday, the New York Times's Public Editor offered a milquetoast apologia for the paper's leading role in falsely ascribing blame for the Tucson massacre to conservative pundits and politicians. Nowhere in the column did Public Editor Arthur Brisbane address columnist Paul Krugman's false smear of Rep. Michele Bachmann, noted in a letter sent by NewsBusters to Brisbane's office on Friday…