BiasAlerts

On Saturday's Good Morning America on ABC, during an interview with Dr. Alveda King - a niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. known for her pro-life activism - substitute host Ron Claiborne challenged her to defend her participation in conservative talker Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally in two out of the three questions he posed to her. The ABC host asked if she was "comfortable aligning yourself" with Beck - considered "inflammatory and divisive" by "many people." After failing to get Dr. King to criticize the conservative talker, Claiborne seemed to appeal to her to "understand at least" why... continue reading

On Thursday's Countdown show, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann tied together Republican opposition to same-sex marriage, the Ground Zero mosque, and illegal immigration, as he charged that "the Republican method" for electoral success is "hate." The MSNBC host opened the show: "The Republican method for winning elections is hate. Hate somebody. Anybody will do. We have seen it this year with immigrants and now, Muslims. And now, in our fifth story tonight: for the first time, we have a former head of the Republican party confirming that, yes, his party does it. They do it to win and did it in... continue reading

On Thursday's The Ed Show on MSNBC, substitute host Cenk Uygur - also of the Young Turks - blamed conservative opposition to the Ground Zero mosque for acts of violence against Muslims, and charged that the Republican party is the "party of hate." He soon added: "Then there's the vitriolic fight against immigrants, undocumented ones and in Arizona just people who happen to look undocumented. And, of course, there's the grand daddy of all prejudice, fear and hatred stoked up against Muslims in this country. Now, it's gotten so bad that a young man stabbed a cabbie in the neck... continue reading

Interviewing President Barack Obama in New Orleans on Sunday afternoon, Brian Williams treated Obama with a level of deference he didn't afford to President George W. Bush as he treated Obama as a great oracle of wisdom to pluck. "Katrina was about so many things. It was about class and race and government and the environment," Williams told Obama in the except aired on the NBC Nightly News, yearning for guidance: "Whatever happened to that national conversation we were supposed to have about it?" Williams raised how "it's getting baked in a little bit in the media that BP was... continue reading

Republicans are "exotic" and "extreme," and against science too, CBS's Bob Schieffer contended on Sunday's Face the Nation. "You have also taken some fairly controversial, some would say very extreme, positions," Schieffer lectured Alaska Republican Senate candidate Joe Miller , citing "you want to phase out Medicare, you want to privatize Social Security." Miller countered: "I would suggest to you that if one thinks that the Constitution is extreme then you'd also think that the founders are extreme." Next, picking up on Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz's claim Democrats are "are centrist" while Republicans "are really off on the right... continue reading

CBS and the rest of the MSM have decided the Tea Party movement is racist and hostile to non-whites, and it's a mantra they're going to illustrate whenever they see an opportunity. Reporter Nancy Cordes saw a "nearly all-white crowd" at Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally in Washington, DC, as she (at least an off-camera female voice) demanded of two black women who weren't afraid to attend: "I'm noticing that there aren't a lot of minorities here today. Why do you think that is?" One of the women shot back: "They're probably over there with Al Sharpton." ( MP3 audio... continue reading

It will be "very difficult for Democrats to demonize" George W. Bush "again" during this campaign season, liberal nationally syndicated columnist Mark Shields despaired on Friday's Inside Washington, because he's "a circumspect and discreet former President." Quite unlike, he didn't say, the often boorish Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. Reacting to Vice President Joe Biden's indictment of the supposed disastrous results from the Bush administration's economic policies, Shields fretted: The problem for the Democrats is this, that the energizer bunny for the 2006, 2008 campaigns has disappeared because of George W. Bush's being a circumspect and discreet former President it... continue reading

Just as they did in the morning, on Friday night the broadcast network stories on Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally in Washington, DC were pegged to left-wing complaints his event is scheduled for the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, except the reporters refused to identify the ideology of Beck's critics while showing no such reluctance to tag him and/or his allies. "The rally in Washington. Followers of conservative radio and TV host Glenn Beck already gathering in the capital," fill-in anchor Erica Hill teased at the top of the CBS Evening News. "In Washington,"... continue reading

Just like NBC and ABC this morning, CBS's The Early Show had a hostile take on Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally scheduled for Saturday on the Mall in Washington, D.C. Correspondent Whit Johnson labeled Beck a "controversial conservative," event speaker Alveda King (a niece of Martin Luther King, Jr.) a "longtime advocate for conservative causes," and suggested that the fact that some attendees "will get there on Tea Party-sponsored buses" contradicted the idea that this would be a non-political event. Yet talking about liberal rabble rouser and onetime Democratic presidential candidate Al Sharpton, Johnson offered no ideological labels or even... continue reading

Continuing their obsession with the credibility-challenged Levi Johnston, whose sole claim to fame is his continuing ability to exploit his relationship with Sarah Palin's daughter, Bristol, CBS's The Early Show on Friday devoted more than four minutes to an "exclusive" interview with the "reality star" and how he now recants his apology for lying about the Palins in previous interviews. To her credit, correspondent Betty Nguyen challenged Johnston's openly frivolous approach to running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska (a stunt concocted for a reality show) and whether his temporary apology was "honest" (he said it was "something I did to... continue reading