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A Washington Post columnist has sharply criticized CNN for failing to retract its claim that British ex-spy Christopher Steele's dossier is 'corroborated,' following a federal indictment that raised serious questions about the document. Media critic Erik Wemple issued the harsh rebuke in a column on Friday, calling on CNN to correct its longstanding claim that its reporting had verified substantial portions of the 2016 dossier alleging Donald Trump conspired with Russia. Last week, a federal indictment alleged that Russian-born analyst Igor Danchenko, a key source for the Steele dossier, fabricated conversations with one source, and used a Democratic political operative...

About a year ago, Tucker Carlson, the Daily Caller’s top editor, joined famed conspiratorialist Alex Jones for a discussion about American society and politics. In an exchange that attracted some attention on the Internet, Jones spun one of his classic theories about how the country is changing: The Democrats went from being the Ku Klux Klan party of race, with Sen. Byrd and all them, to literally going, ‘OK, we’re going to go race-politic with the minorities, make them the majority.’ And so basically they went from financing…La Raza, all the Ford Foundation. And that’s why you have this new...

In a stunning takedown of MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple wrote Thursday that the liberal cable news star “rooted for” British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s dossier, which served as the basis for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants against Trump campaign official Carter Page, to be the smoking gun that would force the president out of office. In an op-ed titled, “Rachel Maddow rooted for the Steele dossier to be true. Then it fell apart,” Wemple wrote, “She seemed to be rooting for the document.” He added, “As part of her Russianist phase, Maddow became a...

So much for closing ranks. Perhaps Arthur Sulzberger thought that his newspaper’s rant about conservatives doing to his reporters what they do to conservatives would generate some sympathy from colleagues in the media. Instead, media critics at the Washington Post and Politico delivered the same message to the New York Times’ publisher — stop whining.The Post’s Erik Wemple wrote that Sulzberger can’t have it both ways. These are public statements of the same kind — and on the same platform — as the media likes to resurface when it suits their purposes. Despite the breathless description used by the...

New Yorker writers Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer pushed back Monday against the New York Times’ coverage of the latest sexual-misconduct allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. ** The paper said it interviewed “several dozen people” in a vain attempt to find someone with “firsthand knowledge” to corroborate Ramirez’s allegations. The Times also said Ramirez contacted former classmates to see if they remembered the alleged incident — and told some she wasn’t sure it was Kavanaugh who exposed himself. But in a Twitter post Monday, Farrow said it was “not accurate” for a Washington Post columnist to have tweeted...

The liberal media doesn’t like the President. For that matter some in the conservative media don’t like the President either…yes, that means our friends at National Review and The Weekly Standard and doubtless a few others. There’s plenty of room for honest disagreement. But it is all too obvious that the Trump candidacy and now the Trump presidency has produced what can only be called Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) among Trump critics both in and out of the media. As noted here previously Time magazine devoted its “Person of the Year” cover in 2008 and 2016 to the new presidents-elect....

USA Today has never taken sides in a presidential race until they un-endorsed Donald Trump by recommending that people not vote for him. You would think this would make anti-Trump Erik Wemple of the Washington Post very happy. Instead Wemple is now in a panic mode.  It wasn't enough for him that the USA Today editorial board recommended that people do not vote for Trump. What has Wemple really riled up is that they did not flat out endorse Hillary Clinton. Instead they recommended that people vote for anyone  but Trump, including besides Hillary, Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, write-in candidates,...

Hey Andrea Mitchell! You are being challenged to ask probing questions of Hillary Clinton in the wake of FBI Director James Comey's scathing report about her State Department emails yesterday. Is it some "vicious rightwinger" calling out Andrea Mitchell? Nope. It is Erik Wemple of the Washington Post who has urged the mainstream media in general, and Andrea Mitchell in particular, to 'slam Hillary Clinton over emails':

This report refers to Shannon Watts as one in a group of “regular people” who began advocating for stricter gun control measures in recent years. After the December 2012 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., she created the “One Million Moms for Gun Control” Facebook page. It later became “Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.” We should have noted that Watts has a background in corporate communications. From 1998 to mid-2012, she was a corporate communications executive or consultant at such companies as Monsanto and FleishmanHillard. Before that, Watts had what she says was a...

Washington Post media blogger Erik Wemple reports that The New York Times is getting very serious about diversity goals in recruiting, hiring, and promoting. Chief Executive Mark Thompson raised eyebrows at a gathering of managers on the business and news sides of the newspaper. According to three Wemple sources, “Supervisors who fail to meet upper management’s requirements in recruiting and hiring minority candidates or who fail to seek out minority candidates for promotions face some stern consequences: They’ll be either encouraged to leave or be fired.” …

Fox News Demonstrates How To Stop Donald Trump: Graphics! By Erik Wemple March 3 Expect to see more graphics in Donald Trump interviews from this point onward. In Thursday night’s debate in Detroit hosted by Fox News, the moderator Chris Wallace thought it would be helpful to press the Republican candidate on the math problems in his economic plan. He started out with this inquiry: “Mr. Trump, your proposed tax cut would add $10 trillion to the nation’s debt over 10 years, even if the economy grows the way that you say it will. You insist that you could make...

In his remarks today at a rally in Fort Worth, Tex., Donald Trump knew he’d make news. “I’ve never said this before,” he declared. We’ll await the word of the Washington Post Fact Checker on the integrity of the statement, but Trump did appear to be veering into a new talking point. A media-law talking point, that is: One of the things I’m going to do, and this is going to make it tougher for me…but one of the things I’m going to do if I win…is I’m going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely...

Are you lazy as hell? Do you absolutely hate to work and want to get paid for doing almost nothing? As a fringe benefit, you will also score big bucks on your way out the door after months as a parasitic do nothing to the tune of perhaps $40,000. If this sounds like the opportunity for you, a no-work job is waiting for you at Politico.Erik Wemple of the Washington Post reported on just such an example. The favorite  part of the story for your humble correspondent was his link titled criticism that he was "lethargic." However, before we get to that, Wemple describes...

As you may have heard, MSNBC has seen some big (and warranted) changes in 2015. Add it all up, and every program that existed from 1:00 PM to 7:00 PM EDT as recently as six months ago no long exists. The alterations are swift: A national correspondent (Kate Snow) and a political director (Chuck Todd) will be joining and rejoining, respectively, the 19-year-old cable network. Morning Joe will occupy 25 percent of live (or plausibly live) programming per day. Opinion-based programming––at least after the morning show and before primetime––has been cleared away as a more traditional news focus takes...

Wow! Suddenly this week Politico reporter Mike Elk shook off his cloak of extreme lethargy and became like the Energizer Bunnie. Gone was his PTSD and STSD (Secondary Traumatic Stress Disorder) which he claims inhibit him from working. Despite not having done a bit of work for six months, there he was front and center at a press conference asking Democrat presidential candidate Bernie Sanders questions. So what was the subject of Elk's inquiry? It was about how badly treated he is at his employer Politico because they haven't approved card check in voting on whether to form a union shop....

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) Crime in Baltimore is a towering story these days. The homicide count in May was 43, the highest in nearly 40 years. Arrests, meanwhile, have dropped through the floor, a situation that some attribute to a reaction to the charges against six Baltimore police officers involved in the Freddie Gray episode, which were announced May 1 by Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby. Baltimore City Fraternal Order of Police President Gene Ryan has spoken forcefully on behalf of his rank and file: “The criminals are taking advantage of the situation in Baltimore since the unrest. Criminals feel empowered now. There...

St. Louis Post-Dispatch Editorial Page Editor Tony Messenger writes that readers — both liberal and conservative ones — have lobbied the paper to change its lineup of conservative columnists. But apparently a bit of a push was necessary. That came from a recent controversial piece by Washington Post columnist George Will — the one about the “supposed campus epidemic of rape” and the way in which “victimhood” serves as a “coveted status that confers privileges.”

<p>Virtually every other show [aside from "Morning Joe"] belongs to hosts who unstintingly support Obama and the Democrats, with only minor points of disagreement. ([Host Chris] Hayes criticizes Obama for his drone killings and surveillance programs, and often conducts friendly interviews with Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who collaborated with Edward Snowden. Melissa Harris-Perry, who appears on weekends at 10 a.m., nearly always defends Obama, and called Glenn Greenwald a “jerk.”) Conservatives are far less visible on MSNBC than liberals are on Fox News, and the right-leaning guests who do appear are typically critics of the conservative movement: Steve Schmidt, the Republican strategist, who says the party is too tolerant of “nuts” and “kooks”; Josh Barro, an advocate for Republican reform who describes himself as “neoliberal”; Abby Huntsman, the daughter of failed presidential candidate Jon, who has described the G.O.P. as a party of “non-inclusion.” The over-all impression is that your average Republican or conservative is simply too fanatical to be part of polite discourse.</p>

On June 18, 1972, the Washington Post reported that the night before, there had been a break-in at the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate Hotel. Although the break-in story made the Post’s front page, no one could then foresee the consequences that would spin out over the ensuing months. This morning, the Post’s Erik Wemple reported that forensic analysis has confirmed multiple invasions of at least one computer used by CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson in late 2012. Attkisson has been one of only a handful of reporters who have dared to write critically about the Obama...

The Associated Press has been one of the few national media outlets providing at least some coverage of the Kermit Gosnell trial, presumably from their local partners, so they certainly deserve some credit for going where their competitors wouldn’t — at least not until recently.  As with most news outlets following an ongoing story, the AP started looking for fresh angles to frame their stories.  Last night, though, the AP sent out a wire story headlined “Philly abortion workers saw few options,” in which Maryclaire Dale focuses on the employment woes of Gosnell’s co-defendants to explain why they followed Gosnell’s orders...