Despite the devastating tornado that struck Oklahoma on Monday, ABC's Good Morning America still found time to devote several segments to stunningly superficial topics, including getting Botox injections at age 20 and Matt Damon's gay love scenes with Michael Douglas in a new movie. Additionally, the network morning show offered yet another segment to the tabloid details of the Jodi Arias criminal trial. In total, this amounted to ten and 34 seconds for stories of minor importance. In contrast, the latest details on the growing Internal Revenue Service scandal warranted a mere 52 seconds . News reader Josh Elliott briefly... continue reading
While much of the news coverage Monday evening and Tuesday morning was dominated by coverage of the tornado that devastated Moore, Oklahoma, Tuesday's NBC Today did manage to provide two news briefs, totaling a minute and fourteen seconds, to the stunning revelation that the Obama administration searched through the private emails of Fox News chief Washington correspondent James Rosen, supposedly as a part of a leak investigation. Neither ABC nor CBS bothered to make any mention of their media colleague Rosen being named a "criminal co-conspirator" for simply doing his job as a journalist. Instead on Tuesday, ABC's Good Morning... continue reading
Ever since he announced he was stepping down as Tonight Show host Jay Leno has seemingly been harder on Barack Obama. Well on Monday's Tonight Show with Jay Leno that trend continued as Leno featured a skit of schoolchildren peppering the President with the tough questions that the press should be hammering him with on a daily basis. The following bit was aired on the May 20 edition of NBC's The Tonight Show with Jay Leno: JAY LENO: Actually President Obama made a surprise visit to a school in Baltimore on Friday. And these kids, you know these little kids... continue reading
On Sunday's NBC Meet the Press , moderator David Gregory urged Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to condemn fellow Republicans for drawing parallels between the scandals rocking the Obama administration and those that occurred under President Nixon: "Would you call on Republicans who talk about impeaching the President or who talk about this as a Nixonian-style cover-up with regard to Benghazi, would you like them to stop it?" [ Listen to the audio ] McConnell responded: "Well, what I think we ought to do is complete the investigation and found out – find out what exactly happened....we know the administration... continue reading
Monday’s CBS Evening News took one break from Oklahoma tornado coverage – to run a piece on how an IRS manager who recently retired from the Cincinnati office, where 501 (c)(4) applications were processed, declared “politics and religion were things that people generally didn’t talk about at work.” Reporter Dean Reynolds focused on the assurances by Bonnie Esrig, who was also featured in a Saturday Washington Post article on how politics had nothing to do with the targeting of conservative groups: “She never heard anyone say the words ‘the President wants this done.’” Reynolds asserted “she worked in the same... continue reading
ABC, CBS, and NBC touted President Obama's Sunday commencement address at Morehouse College in Atlanta on their Sunday evening and Monday morning newscasts, devoting a total of five minutes and 14 seconds to the " powerful speech ," as NBC's Tamron Hall labeled it on Monday's Today . On Monday's CBS This Morning , Norah O'Donnell gushed, " I think it's one of those speeches that will be looked at over the years ." Lester Holt played up the President's apparent " voice of experience " on Sunday's NBC Nightly News , and asserted that " the President is sharing... continue reading
On Friday's PoliticsNation on MSNBC, host Al Sharpton lambasted House Republicans for repeatedly voting to repeal ObamaCare, calling it a "scandal" and an "outrage," as he seemed to cite a questionable study from a left-wing source from 2009 claiming that 45,000 people a year die because they lack health insurance. Sharpton began the segment: You've got to hand it to the Republicans. In a week when they've obsessed over scandals, they've managed to miss an actual scandal. That's their 37th vote to repeal the President's health care law. Trying to deny a law that would literally give health care to... continue reading
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is under fire for soliciting donations from health care companies to underwrite ObamaCare PR efforts to increase enrollment but you wouldn't know that if you only got your news from ABC and NBC or skipped Sunday's edition of CBS's Face the Nation . The Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) networks have effectively buried the scandal that was first broken by the Washington Post on May 10. According to the Sarah Kliff story headlined "Budget request denied, Sebelius turns to health executives to finance Obamacare," the HHS Secretary for three months has "made multiple... continue reading
On Sunday's NBC Nightly News , White House correspondent Peter Alexander led off with Obama team spin on the scandals rocking the administration: "...the White House is aggressively responding, calling accusations of mismanagement 'offensive and absurd.'" [ Listen to the audio ] A soundbite played of Obama advisor Dan Pfeiffer ranting: "There is no question that we want to – that Republicans are trying to make political hay here....What they want to do when they're lacking a positive agenda is try to drag Washington into a swamp of partisan fishing expeditions, trumped-up hearings, and false allegations. We're not gonna let... continue reading
After Friday's IRS testimony before Congress, CNN's Ashleigh Banfield begged CNN host Candy Crowley to "take me off the ledge" and explain that the agency was simply doing its job looking for "sleazeballs that are trying to get special status." Crowley shot down Banfield's astoundingly ignorant plea. "And the only sleazeballs have 'Tea Party' in their name or 'patriot'? What about 'progressive'?" Crowley asked of the agency's double standard in investigating Tea Party groups while approving liberal groups more quickly. [Video below. Audio here .] Banfield had just made a plea to Crowley: "Candy, please, take me off the ledge... continue reading