Originally posted by Dead Man Flying
These are not random samples, not of newspapers or of issues. In addition, the sample size in no way approaches what you would need for a valid claim. Add to that the fact that numerous alternative hypotheses exist (e.g. the Haliburton story didn't sell newspapers and thus was abandoned) and you have an unsubstantiated claim of bias.
Keep stretching though. It "seems" like bias, so it must be!
-- Todd/Leviathn
The stretch is getting less difficult each day.
Network newscasts don’t usually publicize the exclusive interviews with an author to be aired later on a competing network, but the networks were so excited by former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill’s blasts at Bush -- as 'a blind man in a room full of deaf people’ -- that on Friday night ABC and NBC picked up on the shot at Bush released by CBS to promote his appearance on 60 Minutes. The Saturday and Sunday Washington Post and New York Times also featured stories.
Over on the NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams announced: “One of the few top officials ever fired by President George W. Bush is tonight firing back at his old boss. Former Alcoa aluminum CEO Paul O’Neill, the President’s first Treasury Secretary, has said in an interview the President is disengaged and didn’t ask a single question in their first hour-long meeting. He likened Bush’s cabinet meetings to, and we quote now, 'a blind man in a room full of deaf people.’ His story is part of a new book on the early Bush years.”
The CBS Evening News, which on Saturday led with O’Neill’s charges, on Friday featured a plug for 60 Minutes announced by Mike Wallace, who intoned over video of O’Neill and Bush walking up the steps of the Old Executive Office Building next to the White House: “When a former George W. Bush insider says that at cabinet meetings the President acted like blind man talking to the deaf, that’s a story for 60 Minutes. Sunday.”