The Republican Media- No. 19

Two articles this week by the the Associated Press' White House correspondent Jennifer Loven reflected a bias, the first toward conservative ideology and the second toward the Republican Party.

On January 8 Loven, commenting on the President-elect's statement the previous day regarding entitlement programs, wrote that Obama plans next month in his initial budget message to indicate how his budget plan "extends to the ballooning and so-far unsolvable fiscal problem presented by the Social Security and Medicare programs."

That would not be "extends to the Social Security and Medicare programs" but rather "ballooning and so-far unsolvable fiscal problem" etc. That slant would still be a slant but at least an accurate one, were it not so far off the mark. But as the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman, and the Social Security trustees themselves demonstrate, Social Security is not in "crisis" (and the problems with Medicare are most easily resolved by addressing the health care crisis).

And in a piece on January 9 about Barack Obama's comments at George Mason University in Virginia, Loven and David Espo of the AP write "Second-guessing came from the left and the right: While some Democrats said the proposed tax cuts were too small, Republicans warned against excessive new spending." Democrats merely "say," give their opinion; Republicans, however, "warn" us about what we are assured is "excessive" spending. Apparently, while Congress hasn't decided yet, the Associated Press has assured us the spending proposals are excessive.

The "liberal media?" Only if one is looking at it through a mirror.