The hosts of the three network morning shows on Tuesday grilled Paul Ryan, questioning the Republican's facts and citing Joe Biden as a policy expert. Former Democratic operative turned journalist George Stephanopoulos highlighted a quote from the Vice President touting the last four years. Good Morning America's Stephanopoulos interrogated, " When [Biden] says Osama bin Laden is dead, General Motors is alive, you say? " Using remarkably similar language, CBS This Morning anchor Charlie Rose pressed Ryan on Obama's first term, parroting, "... Vice President Biden has come back and said, as you know, General Motors is alive and Osama... continue reading
Each morning, the Media Research Center is showcasing the most egregious bias we have uncovered over the years — four quotes for each of our 25 years, 100 quotes total — all leading up to our big 25th Anniversary Gala on September 27. (Click here for ticket information) We’ve already published the worst quotes of 1988 and 1989 ; today, the worst of 1990 . Highlights include: Time magazine saluting Mikhail Gorbachev as “the communist Pope and the Soviet Martin Luther;” CBS finding “nostalgia” for the Berlin Wall; and Knight Ridder’s economics reporter giving this slanted take on the 1980s:... continue reading
Playing to a crowd of Democrats in Charlotte cheering on Democratic operative Chris Matthews as he hosted his MSNBC program, Howard Fineman blurted “I survived Tampa and am now glad to be here in Charlotte,” before he derided the Republican gathering: “That convention was like dropping a bowling ball in a sand box.” (An apparent reference to the lack of a post-convention bounce in the polls for Romney.) Fineman, who used to be Newsweek ’s chief political correspondent and is now pretending to be a journalist at the Huffington Post , proceeded to argue: “If they were trying to reach... continue reading
Sunday brought an overload of New York Times columnists, including former reporters, calling the previous week's Republican National Convention a celebration of lies and extremism on abortion and gay marriage. Times columnist and former White House correspondent Maureen Dowd was given more room than usual to rant about Paul Ryan and the Republicans in her Sunday column, "Cruel Conservatives Throw a Masquera de Ball ." After calling the Republican Convention " a colossal hoax ," she said of Paul Ryan's speech, " the altar boy altered reality, conjuring up a world so compassionate, so full of love-thy-neighbor kindness and small-town... continue reading
Bogus media "fact-checking" continues, and the New York Times ' Michael Cooper is leading the pack. His Saturday "Political Memo," " Fact-Checkers Howl, but Campaigns Seem Attached to Dishonest Ads ," marks Cooper's second foray into the burgeoning genre in two days, focusing on the allegedly false statements emanating from Mitt Romney's ads and the Republican National Convention podium. Cooper heralds the "Pulitzer Prize-winning" fact-check website Politifact as the gold standard of objectivity, though conservatives point to analysis like this: A Smart Politics content analysis of more than 500 PolitiFact stories from January 2010 through January 2011 finds that current... continue reading
Of the three morning shows, only ABC's Good Morning America on Monday highlighted two drunken delegates at the Democratic National Convention, one of whom was forced to leave North Carolina. Fill-in host Lara Spencer touted the story, asserting that "things are already off to a shaky start." Reporter Cecilia Vega explained, " Two California Democratic delegates partied into the wee hours of Sunday morning. In the lobby of their Charlotte hotel, one was so drunk he apparently passed out and was taken to the hospital ." She added that the unidentified delegate was "belligerent" and threatened with arrest for impersonating... continue reading
Chris Matthews appeared on the Labor Day edition of the Today show to promote his fawning new documentary, Barack Obama: Making History. ( The subtitle for MSNBC's special on Romney was much more restrained: "The Making of a Candidate.") The liberal host also insisted that, "from now on," the media will watch Paul Ryan for lies. [See video below. MP3 audio here .] Today reporter Carl Quintanilla and Matthews sounded like an echo chamber. Quintanilla tossed this softball: "...But there was a lot of criticism about [Ryan's] convention speech, Chris. Some said he actually made false statements in the course... continue reading
Every day for the next few weeks, the Media Research Center is showcasing the most egregious bias the we have uncovered over the years — four quotes for each of the 25 years of the MRC, 100 quotes total — all leading up to our big 25th Anniversary Gala on September 27. (Click here for ticket information) With each TV quote, we’ve added the matching video from our archive, some of which hasn’t been seen in nearly a quarter-century. Yesterday, we published the worst bias of 1988 ; today, the most outrageous quotes of 1989. Among the highlights: On Ronald... continue reading
“I’m frankly, fed up, with the one-sided bias,” a frustrated Newt Gingrich asserted on Sunday’s Meet the Press , citing two blatant examples. First: “Where is the outrage over overt, deliberate racism” in Vice President Joe Biden telling a black audience “if the Republicans win you will be ‘in chains’”? Second, President Obama “voted three times to protect the right of doctors to kill babies who came out of abortion still alive. That plank says tax-paid abortion at any moment, meaning partial birth abortion -- that’s a 20 percent issue,” a position which Democrats “couldn’t defend...for a day if it... continue reading
Every day for the next few weeks, the Media Research Center will showcase the most egregious bias we have uncovered over the years — four quotes for each of the 25 years of the MRC, 100 quotes total — all leading up to our big 25th Anniversary Gala on September 27. (Click here for ticket information.) With each TV quote, we’ve added the matching video from our archive, some of which hasn’t been seen in nearly a quarter-century. To start: the worst quotes of 1988, MRC’s first full year in business. Among the highlights: Dan Rather ambushes the first George... continue reading