Normally the announcement that a government official is leaving a post to join a company they had oversight of would invoke cries of crony capitalism from the likes of NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams, but when that person is joining your company it makes for quite the awkward news brief. Williams, to date, has expressed no outrage at the fact that FCC commissioner Meredith Baker is leaving that job for a gig as senior vice president of governmental affairs at Comcast/NBC Universal, even though just four short months ago she voted to approve the merger of those two companies... continue reading
CNN's Fareed Zakaria appeared three times on Newsroom Thursday to preview and afterward praise President Obama's speech on the Middle East - but never revealed that he has recently had face-to-face meetings with the president on foreign policy matters. Last weekend a comment by CNN prime time host Eliot Spitzer revealed that Zakaria was advising the president on foreign policy matters, but Zakaria later dismissed that observation and said he simply had off-the-record conversations with Obama on foreign issues. However, he still did not disclose that information when he evaluated Obama's foreign policy speech Thursday on CNN. Zakaria positively described... continue reading
At the top of NBC's Nightly News on Wednesday, anchor Brian Williams teased a story on charter public schools: "In our 'Education Nation' report tonight, the agonizing lottery for kids and their families to get into the best schools, but are they the best schools?" He later declared that families "put everything on the line for a coveted spot in a charter school, but do these schools really deliver?" Introducing a report by education correspondent Rehema Ellis, Williams touted her examining "the questions being raised about whether charter schools are truly better schools." After detailing anxious parents hoping their children... continue reading
According to the three major networks, the granting of numerous waivers to Barack Obama's health care law, including 38 in April alone to wealthy, entertainment businesses in Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco district, isn't of much interest. ABC and CBS have completely ignored waivers, while NBC only included a general mention from a Republican senator. As the Daily Caller's Matthew Boyle reported, 1300 waivers have been granted and while that information is online, "it has not made public which companies and other entities have been denied waivers and why they were denied." 20 percent went to Pelosi's district. Appearing on the... continue reading
Every hour but one of CNN's Tuesday evening news coverage featured at least a mention of former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's marital infidelity. Guess which anchor backed away from any mention of the scandal? Schwarzenegger's revelation of his fathering a child with a mistress was one of the day's leading headlines, and merited a mention if not a segment on most every CNN news hour Tuesday. During its 5 p.m.-12 a.m. EDT coverage, CNN reported the story every hour except during the 8 p.m. EDT slot - the prime-time show In the Arena with Eliot Spitzer. Spitzer made no mention... continue reading
New York Times political reporter Matt Bai still hasn't forgotten the "overtly racist" Willie Horton ad and sees "a racial element" in just about every attack against President Obama, no matter what the issue. His latest "Political Times" column, " Race and Republican Attacks on Obama ," posted online Tuesday, pivoted from Newt Gingrich's latest press drubbing to the matter of racism and the G.O.P. Newt Gingrich did his level best to appear level in his "Meet the Press" interview Sunday, maintaining a mostly subdued, thoughtful tone except for one telling moment - when David Gregory, the host, asked him... continue reading
Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert, on Tuesday's Colbert Report, featured MRC President L. Brent Bozell in his "The Word" segment that ridiculed those who credit enhanced interrogation or waterboarding in the killing of Osama bin Laden. After playing a clip of Bozell, from the May 6, Fox and Friends , saying waterboarding led to the death of bin Laden and hailing: "Hip, hip hooray to George Bush" Colbert joked: "Yes, three cheers for George Bush! Unless you're in a gagged stress position, in which case try three grunts." Colbert then went on to make fun of Donald Rumsfeld, mocking that the... continue reading
In an interview with John Hudson of the left-wing magazine The Atlantic, screenwriter and producer Aaron Sorkin described where he gets his news and quickly launched into a tirade against conservative media figures: "Beck and Limbaugh are eye-poppingly awful. It would be easier to buy their love of America if they didn't have such hate for Americans. They're my generation's Joe McCarthy..." Sorkin claimed Beck and Limbaugh were guilty of "tarring anyone who disagrees with them with schoolyard epithets and, of course, being 'un-American' or even on the side of America's enemies.... They appeal to the worst in the worst... continue reading
CNN continued its rehabilitation of Eliot Spitzer's political career in leaving his name out of a lengthy list of recent political sex scandals Tuesday. As MediaBistro and my colleague Tom Blumer reported yesterday, the network shied away from disclosing the checkered past of one of its prime-time anchors. In the wake of former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's revelations that he fathered a child with a mistress, CNN ran a segment during the 2 p.m. EDT hour covering recent political sex scandals. Correspondent Suzanne Malveaux mentioned six by name and CNN ran old news clips of even more - but failed... continue reading
Hosting openly-gay CNN anchor Don Lemon on her Monday night show, HLN's Joy Behar lamented that Lemon will have to interview GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum "who seems like a big homophobe." The liberal host advised Lemon that "you're going to have people sit there with you like Rick Santorum who seems like a big homophobe, and others because they're running for president or whatever, and will talk about gay marriage, et cetera. How do you feel that you'll be able to handle that easily?" [Click here for audio .] Lemon, who on Sunday revealed via Twitter that he is... continue reading