Eager to defend President Obama from criticism of his vacation in Martha's Vineyard amid multiple international crises, both Sunday's ABC Good Morning America and Monday's NBC Today used false spin to downplay the bad optics. [ Listen to the audio ] On GMA , co-host Dan Harris tried to deflect from Obama's time on the golf course by claiming that "George W. Bush played his fair share of golf during the Iraq war as well," an assertion that NewsBusters' Mark Finkelstein promptly disproved . On Today , White House correspondent Chris Jansing noted that "the President arrived here to Martha's... continue reading
Andrea Mitchell, NBC’s Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent, had some surprisingly harsh words for the Obama Administration in the wake of the militant group ISIS holding thousands of religious minorities hostage near the northern Iraq city of Irbil. Speaking on Meet the Press on Sunday, August 10, Mitchell proclaimed that regarding Isis “there was intelligence. And to say that they were shocked by the Peshmerga on Saturday night being routed is a farce. The White House wasn't listening.” The segment began with Chuck Todd, NBC News Political Director, Chief White House Correspondent and host of MSNBC’s The Daily Rundown, arguing that... continue reading
On Thursday, August 7, Senator John Walsh (D-Mont.) formally announced that he will not run for a full term in the Senate following revelations that he plagiarized large portions of his master’s thesis from the Army War College. Despite Walsh’s announcement, the “Big Three” (ABC, CBS, NBC) have yet to cover the story during their 19 hours of air time from Thursday night through Sunday morning. In fact, CBS has been the only network to even cover the initial plagiarism story, giving it a mere 31 seconds during its CBS This Morning broadcast on July 24. As NewsBusters’ Scott Whitlock... continue reading
Reid Cherlin, an Assistant Press Secretary during the first two years plus of the Obama administration, managed to deliver two laugh-worthy howlers in a piece for Rolling Stone posted this past Monday: > “Barack Obama never had reporters eating out of his hand the way that right-wingers love to allege.” > “I...believe he’ll be remembered as an excellent President.” The two whoppers came in “ The Presidency and the Press ,” a piece in the August 14-dated issue of the magazine in which Cherlin contended Obama is a victim of how “the old way of the news business – in... continue reading
The Big Three networks steered clear of labeling the Islamist group ISIS "terrorists" on their evening newscasts on Friday. Instead, ABC's World News and CBS Evening News labeled the genocidal radicals " militants ." NBC Nightly News used the more benign " rebels " in their coverage of the group's latest attacks on the Kurdish part of Iraq. The closest that a journalist at ABC, CBS, or NBC got to using the "terrorist" label was Scott Pelley's teaser at the very top of CBS Evening News : [MP3 audio available here ; video below ] SCOTT PELLEY (teaser): Tonight, back... continue reading
During Friday morning’s coverage of the 72-hour cease-fire ending in Gaza, ABC and CBS refused to explicitly acknowledge Hamas as the party responsible for ending the cease-fire with Israel. Instead, those two networks referred to those responsible only as “militants” or “Palestinian militants” firing rockets at Israel. NBC’s Today did cite Hamas as the side responsible for terminating the truce, but it came during a news brief in the 8:00 a.m. hour after a one-minute-and-17 second report aired during the 7:00 a.m. hour. News reader Natalie Morales stated during the news brief that: “ The three-day truce between Israel and... continue reading
Of the three network morning shows on Friday, only NBC's Today made any mention of President Obama being criticized over his slow response to the terrorist group ISIS taking over Iraq. Co-host Savannah Guthrie raised the issue to chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd: "Listen to the President last night, his reluctance to get into Iraq is palpable. But on the other hand, he's facing criticism, I think you're reporting from all quarters, that maybe he waited too long to do anything and now we see ISIS in an even more dangerous position." [ Listen to the audio ] Todd... continue reading
On August 6, Cliff May of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies charged that while the media have filled their stories on the current conflict in Gaza with “pictures of neighborhoods reduced to rubble, with Palestinian men, women and children in desperate circumstances,” they have been negligent in telling their audiences that Hamas has been “deploying civilians as human shields, storing missiles in mosques and UN schools, setting up command posts in hospitals, using ambulances to ferry terrorists to battle, and children to dig tunnels.” One reason for this bias, according to May, is Hamas’ intimidation of journalists. May relayed... continue reading
During both their Thursday evening and Friday morning newscasts, ABC, CBS and NBC all failed to report news that a scandal-plagued Democratic U.S. Senator from Montana dropped his campaign for a full term, leaving the seat as a likely Republican takeover in the 2014 midterms. Senator John Walsh abandoned his campaign on Thursday, two weeks after the New York Times reported that the Democrat plagiarized extensive sections of his master's degree from the Army War College. With the networks avoiding the story, it was left to CNN's New Day to offer a brief amount of Friday morning coverage. John King... continue reading
Gene Simmons is tired of watching the world walk all over the President. On Thursday’s edition of FNC’s Outnumbered the frontman for the rock band Kiss railed against Barack Obama: “I think that our president is not being a leader. He is not stepping up and drawing the line in the sand and sticking to it.” During a discussion about Vladimir Putin defying the United States on a number of fronts Simmons told the panelists he’s seen this story before with Obama . “I think that our president is not being a leader. He is not stepping up and drawing... continue reading