BiasAlerts

While Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) was calling for troop withdrawal in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for that military spending to go to deficit reduction, CNN's Piers Morgan would not press him about U.S. military action in Libya – a decision authorized by Democratic President Obama. Frank has been a champion of cutting the defense budget and continued his screed Tuesday night, calling for a $200 billion-a-year cut on military spending. He even criticized Obama's decision to leave troops in Iraq. However, he was not asked about Libya, and did not comment on it. "The time has come for us to... continue reading
At the top of Wednesday's NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer declared: "President Obama faces new criticism from members of his own party, is he doing enough to manage the [economic] crisis?...Should he, for example, demand that Congress cut short its summer vacation to address the situation?" In the segment that followed, the headline on screen read: "Dems Urge Obama to Get Tough With GOP & Congress." Chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd explained that "there are a lot of Democrats out there that believe this is a leadership test for President Obama....And many Democrats are increasingly upset about the way... continue reading
ABC's Good Morning America on Wednesday ignored the $14 million failure of labor and liberal groups to win back the state senate in Wisconsin through a recall vote. Both CBS's Early Show and NBC's Today covered the effort to retaliate against that state's legislation stripping collective bargaining rights for public workers. Early Show's Elaine Quijano reported on the story in a full segment (though not until the 8am hour). The Today show, a four hour program, mentioned it only once in a news brief. Quijano explained that four of the six GOP senators held on and added, "For Wisconsin Democrats,... continue reading
Newsweek editor Tina Brown defended her magazine's controversial cover portraying Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) as the "Queen of Rage" on the August 10 edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe, offering no apology since the three-term congresswoman could become America's first "crazy" president. "Some people look at this picture and think, you know, Michele Bachmann looks crazy," remarked Brown. "Some people look at it and think it's the next President of the United States. The fact that these two things are no longer mutually exclusive is what, I think, makes it pretty compelling." Explaining her decision to use an unflattering photo of... continue reading
Referencing Michael Moore's absurd tweet that President Obama should arrest the CEO of Standard & Poors for downgrading America's credit rating, CNN's Kyra Phillips actually asked her panel members who they would like to see arrested in the fallout of the downgrade. Whether or not the question was serious, Moore's tweet was. On Monday he implored President Obama , via Twitter, to "show some guts" and arrest the CEO of Standard & Poors. "These criminals brought down the economy in 2008& [sic] now they will do it again," Moore tweeted. [Video below.] Moore may or may not have realized that... continue reading
CNN's Fareed Zakaria made it quite clear last summer that he supported the construction of the Ground Zero mosque. He was much more neutral in an interview with the mosque's developer Sunday, but was content to let his guest tell his side of the story without any scrutiny from the CNN host. Although the once-proposed mosque is no longer making headlines, Zakaria decided anyway to feature the mosque's developer Sharif El-Gamal for a soft interview one year after the controversy ignited. El-Gamal received fawning coverage by CBS and NBC last summer for his work. [Video below.] El-Gamal related to Zakaria... continue reading
With such esteemed liberal intellectual heavyweights like comedian Bill Maher and Al Gore calling for the liberal grassroots to stand up and make their voices heard, CNN's Carol Costello floated the idea of a liberal version of the Tea Party on Monday. "Does America need a liberal Tea Party?" Costello asked during the 11 a.m. EDT hour of CNN's Newsroom. Costello was not completely enthusiastic over the idea – she worried that it could "lead to more hyper-partisanship," as if the Tea Party was already doing enough of that. [Video below.] The innocuous question stands in stark contrast with CNN's... continue reading
CNN's Don Lemon asked a guest Sunday if President Obama is "more conservative" than most would believe. Lemon referred back to his question last week when he asked a Democratic Congressman if Obama would do better running as a conservative in 2012. The CNN anchor claimed he was being facetious then, but jovially added "Someone took that seriously." Then, quoting a columnist who argues Obama is a closet moderate-conservative, he posed a question to guest Heather McGhee from Demos.org: "Is Obama more conservative than most people think?" [Video below.] Lemon had quoted from a piece by Fiscal Times columnist Bruce... continue reading
When even the ultra-liberal National Organization for Women is attacking Newsweek's cover photo of Michele Bachmann as sexist it's clear that magazine has sunk to a new low, but the Lois Romano companion story may be even more insulting than the "Queen of Rage" photo itself. The article for the August 15 issue entitled, "Tea Party Queen, Why Michele Bachmann Is Riding High Going Into Iowa" oozes with contempt not only for the Minnesota Republican Congresswoman herself but also her Tea Party supporters. Early on in the story Romano depicts crowd at one of her speeches as a bunch of... continue reading
With outrage from right to left over Newsweek 's ' Queen of Rage' cover story photo of Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann in which she looks crazy, or at least empty-headed, a look back at how during the last campaign the magazine, under previous ownership, made sure candidate Barack Obama always looked presidential. The image below was collated for the ' Scrapbook' page in the July 28, 2008 Weekly Standard , which dubbed Newsweek 'Obamaweek' and illustrated the media's infatuation with Obama by displaying images of six Newsweek covers featuring Obama. - Brent Baker is Vice President for Research and... continue reading