Over the past year since its inception, the media have worked hard to discredit and denigrate the tea party movement. News organizations employed various strategies, from dismissing the protests as astroturf, to using derogatory nicknames for participants, and finally labeling it as a violent extremist fringe. In their futile attempt to get something to stick, the media have become increasingly desperate and irresponsible in their coverage. In the Media Research Center's special report, 'TV's Tea Party Travesty,' MRC Research Director Rich Noyes focused in on the slanted coverage of the tea parties by ABC, CBS, and NBC over the past... continue reading
At the top of Wednesday's CBS Early Show, co-host Maggie Rodriguez proclaimed: "the truth about salt, why a new report wants the government to take salt off the table." She later introduced a segment on the topic by explaining: "Americans eat about 1 ½ tablespoons of salt every day....there's a major new push this morning to curb that habit." Rodriguez spoke with CBS medical correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton about the government intrusion and noted that there was "confusion" over "reports that the FDA might regulate salt." Ashton claimed: "there was a fair amount of misinterpretation of yesterday's news....the Institute of... continue reading
Horror of horrors, at least to ABC, last week Sarah Palin suggested the U.S. is a "Christian nation," hardly an unusual presumption, but the network discovered "controversy" as anchor Diane Sawyer announced: "Tonight, a question about religion and America, occasioned by comments by Sarah Palin that are getting a lot of attention." A lot of attention from liberal groups with a specific agenda on the subject, a fact left out of the World News story, but revealed in an ABCNews.com article which led with how "two groups dedicated to the separation of church and state are now speaking out against... continue reading
Chris Matthews - who was offended by Rush Limbaugh calling the Obama administration the "regime"- claimed the Republicans were engaged in a "Stalinesque" purge. On Tuesday's Hardball Matthews charged that conservatives challenging moderates within the Republican Party (like Marco Rubio versus Charlie Crist in Florida) was akin to Joseph Stalin's violent purges in the 1930s, as he teased an upcoming segment this way: "Coming up what happens to Republicans who don't march to the right wing tune? Well they're getting purged. This is Stalinesque, this stuff." Later on in the segment Matthews claimed the GOP was engaging in something "particularly... continue reading
Good Morning America's Ashleigh Banfield on Sunday spun Bill Clinton's continuing attack on talk radio as a "war of words" between the ex-President and the "right-wing polemics [sic]." The former MSNBC host joined ABC in 2009 after a bitter departure from that cable network. [Audio available here .] On Sunday, Banfield provided no ideological description for Clinton. Yet, regarding Rush Limbaugh and other conservative voices, she complained, "And [Clinton] has really entered- I like to call it cable chaos- the war of words over the right-wing polemics [sic], with regard to the language that's been used lately, especially leading up... continue reading
On her CNN program on Monday, Campbell Brown forwarded one of the Left's talking points about the tea parties by stating that " it does appear that we are seeing a rise in right wing extremism recently ." However, her guest, historian Robert Churchill of the University of Hartford, downplayed her claim and claimed that groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center were "exaggerating" the threat. Brown brought on Churchill at the bottom half of the 8 pm Eastern hour. Midway through the interview, she made her "right wing extremism" claim and cited "a number of studies that have looked... continue reading
On Monday's Countdown show, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann used his regular "Worst Person" segment to accuse Rush Limbaugh of having "blood on your hands" for the Oklahoma City bombing in response to the conservative talk radio host pointing out that, while some liberals have tried to blame talk radio for inspiring Timothy McVeigh to commit mass murder, McVeigh himself actually admitted to being motivated by the 1993 raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, and even perpetrated the attack in Oklahoma City on the two-year anniversary of the disastrous event. Ignoring the argument that the federal government might have... continue reading
Bloomberg Washington Editor Al Hunt appeared on the web-only section of Sunday's This Week and dismissed the idea that the Tea Party movement has broad appeal. He derided, " They love Glenn Beck and they're skeptical of John McCain. That's not America." Hunt's comments pivoted off of remarks from the conservative George Will, who pointed to a new Rasmussen poll showing Americans more in line with the thinking of the tea partiers than Barack Obama. Hunt scoffed, "They are angry, conservative, little bit more upper-income Republicans...I don't think they're closer to the country, George, than Barack Obama." During the panel... continue reading
A new Pew poll that shows just 22 percent of respondents trust the government was actually covered by NBC Nightly News on Monday night but for some reason NBC's Today show didn't find that news interesting as they failed to report on the results. However, on Tuesday's Today, they did find a Pew poll they did like, their results on teen texting, as Today co-anchor Ann Curry relayed: "The study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project says that texting is now the main way that teens communicate." On last evening's Nightly news Savannah Guthrie, at the tail end... continue reading
CNN's Rick Sanchez named me [MRC news analyst Matthew Balan] and NewsBusters to "the very top" of his daily 'List That U Don't Want 2 Be On' on his Rick's List show on Monday. Sanchez criticized me [Balan] for apparently not being able to tell he was "joking" during a segment on April 15 where he stated that "you think it's too cold to have a volcano" in Iceland [audio available here ]. I have been monitoring the anchor since September 2007 , before he landed his regular weekday gig on CNN. It actually isn't the first time he recognized... continue reading