There's bad journalism and then there's bad journalism.

I've made this case before, but it keeps popping up--so, I'll give it one more go and then try to let it rest.  Pew Research has released another very interesting report on coverage of the 2012 presidential race.  Among its recent findings it turns out that in the last week before the general election MSNBC presented no positive political coverage of Romney and no negative coverage of Obama.  They compare this to Fox News' coverage in the following graph:

The differences are indeed striking, but not at all conclusive of anything but the facts (viz., MSNBC presented no positive Romney stories and no negative Obama stories).  Notice that what is striking is not the positive to negative gap on the Obama side--the gap is precisely the inverse on the Fox side (51 points)--but the fact that there were no negative reports on Obama, and no positive on Romney.  However, this is not philosophically impossible.  One might run similar research on reports regarding Donald Trump (on any station at any time of the year).  Were you to find a network that ran an equal number of positive and negative stories on Trump, I'd suggest you watch a different channel.  Nevertheless, News Busters today posted a blog regarding this research.  Their conclusion was that this is "disgraceful".  Notice there is absolutely no analysis, just a presentation of the numbers.
At the same time, Media Matters just posted this blog regarding Walmart's handling of unions and strikers.  I hate to have to say it, but to be sure--I am not arguing in favor of unions, nor am I arguing in favor of Walmart, I am arguing in favor of reasonable and proper journalism.  Notice that, regardless of what you think of the story and the actors in it, this is a conflict of interest, and should have been avoided, or declared as such.

A followup on Layoff Bomb-gate.

Here is a quick followup to my previous post regarding what is being called the Layoff Bomb (a phrase coined, as far as I can tell, by Michelle Malkin of Twitchy.com).  To be sure and to repeat, I am interested in the argument, not in defending ACA nor scolding businesses that may have legitimate reasons to downsize.  The problem here is the narrative.  Malkin's claim was that Obama would be (and now is) responsible for these jobs lost.  As I suggested in my previous post, it is awfully difficult to argue that ACA (Obamacare) was responsible for the losses, since it has yet to be implemented.  In addition, it is designed to have little negative affect on small businesses (as in, they will not be forced to participate).  As it turns out, and as Media Matters is reporting, many of the larger businesses have cited reasons for the layoffs that are entirely unrelated to ACA.  Have a gander.