Immediately after Paul Ryan concluded his acceptance speech for the Republican Party's vice presidential nomination on Wednesday, the media sought ways to tear down the Wisconsin Congressman's indictment of the failures of the Obama administration. In particular, networks and newspapers attempted to knock down Ryan's accurate claim that President Obama promised to keep open a GM plant that closed in 2009. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and PolitiFact quickly labeled Ryan's criticism as "false," claiming Obama made no such promise and that the plant closed before he took office. But as The Washington Examiner's Conn Carroll detailed on Thursday, that supposed... continue reading
New York Times "TV Watch" columnist Alessandra Stanley focused Friday on MSNBC's embarrassingly partisan coverage of the Republican National Convention and tried to contrast it with the struggle of NBC's more objective reporters to remain above the fray: " MSNBC, Arch Counterprogramming to Fox ." The online head was more interesting: "How MSNBC Became Fox’s Liberal Evil Twin." Stanley even accused MSNBC host Chris Matthews of "thuggish" behavior in an interview with a female Republican governor. But do NBC reporters Andrea Mitchell and Chuck Todd (or anchor Brian Williams) really "keep their opinions to themselves" as Stanley claims? Hardly. In... continue reading
The network morning shows on Friday slammed conservative actor Clint Eastwood's "bizarre," "rambling" endorsement of Mitt Romney at the Republican National Convention. Good Morning America , CBS This Morning and NBC's Today dissected the speech in 11 out of 12 segments about the convention. GMA guest host Amy Robach mocked, " The good, the bad and the ugly. " She hyperbolically added, " Did Clint Eastwood derail Romney's big night with a bizarre warm up speech? " CBS This Morning co-anchor Norah O'Donnell spit out a similar critique: "It was the 'no good, the bad and the ugly.'" CBS obsessed... continue reading
In an interview with Fox News host Bill O'Reilly on Thursday's NBC Today , co-host Matt Lauer worried that the Republican National Convention was not appealing to a broad audience: "When you talk about the conservatives and we talk about the gender gap and how important women are...do you think this convention is reaching out to the people who are going to decide this election, independents, moderates and women?" [ Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump ] Earlier in the show, Lauer hyped the same concern while talking to former Florida Governor Jeb Bush ,... continue reading
Just moments after Mitt Romney finished his acceptance speech, NBC’s Tom Brokaw and Chuck Todd painted the GOP nominee as a backwards-looking candidate who was going back to the GOP’s “extreme” and less “inclusive” past. On NBC’s live coverage of Thursday’s Republican National Convention, Brokaw recalled covering Romney’s father and observed that while George Romney “fought” to make the GOP “more moderate,” “less extreme” and “more inclusive” his son was becoming “much more conservative.” For his part, Todd thought Romney’s speech was full of “optimistic nostalgia” and “return to” phrases that reminded him of failed ‘96 GOP presidential nominee Bob... continue reading
MSNBC's Chris Matthews didn't even wait for the balloons and the confetti to stop falling before laying into Mitt Romney. Moments after the former Massachusetts governor finished his Thursday night speech at the Republican National Convention, Matthews slammed the supposedly "very dark, very jingoistic, very anti-scientific, and, really, Know-Nothing " elements of the address. The left-wing host concluded that " on science, on war and peace ... I personally think this was a bad address for the American people ." Matthews later went on a tear on how Romney was apparently " narrow-minded ... small and insular and piggish ...to... continue reading
NBC News demonstrated again Thursday night it has become little more than the more-watched broadcast arm of MSNBC, advancing the same left-wing attacks on conservatives as first trotted out on the cable side. While ABC and CBS managed to refrain from airing entire stories and interviews aimed to discredit Paul Ryan, NBC did not. In packaging Obama campaign talking points, however, Chuck Todd had to concede the accuracy of what Ryan asserted in his Wednesday night convention address, humorously leading Todd to conclude that “what he said many times was technically factual” but, “by what he left out,” he “actually... continue reading
Running scared? New York Times editorial board member and former Times reporter David Firestone, who has never hidden his liberalism in either position, accused vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan of "dishonesty" and "cowardice" on the Opinion Editor's blog early Thursday afternoon, " Beyond Factual Dishonesty ." An army of fact-checkers swarmed around Paul Ryan’s acceptance speech last night, and the verdict was swift and unanimous: lies, omissions, a sweeping rewrite of recent history. But there’s one question no checker can answer: Why was it necessary to lie in the first place? Mr. Ryan could have made a sharp critique of... continue reading
Nightline reporter David Wright on Wednesday night profiled the new conservative documentary 2016: Obama's America , but warned that the film was a "conspiracy" movie that included "disingenuous" ideas. D'Souza asserted that he takes Obama and his words seriously, prompting him to believe that the President is pushing an anti-American agenda. Wright scolded, "That's a little disingenuous though." The ABC reporter knocked the film as unreliable, downplaying, "D'Souza spins out the conspiracy theory that, by 2016, the U.S. economy will collapse and there will be a United States of Islam led by a nuclear armed Iran and that Obama wants... continue reading
CBS News has talked quite about their latest poll released Tuesday, especially how Mitt Romney is trailing Barack Obama by 10 points among women voters -- bad news for the Republican, of course. But unstated in the network's on-air coverage is the rest of the story: that Barack Obama trails Mitt Romney among men voters by 9 points, by a 49 to 40 margin. How come no discussion of how poorly Obama is doing with men? Is it because the Democrats have cooked up a "war on women" theme for this campaign, and talking about the male vote doesn't do... continue reading