Uniquely among Friday's broadcast network evening newscasts, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams gave his viewers a glimpse into the undignified exit from the White House endured by the Dalai Lama, who was made to walk past a number of trash bags as President Obama sought to keep the Chinese government from noticing the meeting. A photograph of Tibet's exiled Buddhist spiritual leader walking past the bags was shown as the NBC host read the piece. Below is a transcript of the news item from the Friday, February 19, NBC Nightly News, as read by Brian Williams: How do you... continue reading
On Friday's Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, Newsweek contributor Jerry Adler was shown reciting a poem in which he lamented all the agenda items that are unpassable because of the Senate filibuster rule that gives Republicans the power to block action by the Democratic majority. Host Maddow set up the clip: "Every week, Jerry Adler turns a story from the news into a verse for Newsweek. So now, without further ado, we present Newsweek`s Jerry Adler reading his latest opus, '59 to 41: Filibuster this Poem,' with a special assist from our own Kent Jones." Jones playing the bongo was... continue reading
CNN regular and Daily Beast columnist John Avlon labeled "saving freedom," the theme for CPAC 2010, as "a little extreme" and "a little far out" on Thursday's Campbell Brown program and Friday's American Morning. Avlon went further, bashing conservatives' criticism of President Obama: " When they say 'saving freedom,' they're confusing, at heart, losing an election with living under tyranny ." The Daily Beast writer appeared during a segment 20 minutes into the 8 pm Eastern hour of Brown's program with Red State's Erick Erickson and CNN senior political correspondent Candy Crowley. The CNN anchor asked Avlon, who attended the... continue reading
The New York Times did due diligence in its article marking the first day of the 2010 Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, in a story by Adam Nagourney and Kate Zernike, " Conservatives of All Stripes Gather, Emboldened but Far From Unanimous ." The text box hammered at one of its favorite themes, dissenting factions among Republicans: "Republican leaders and the Tea Party don't always agree." For 30 minutes on Thursday, Mitt Romney, a likely Republican candidate for president in 2012, offered a systematic indictment of what he described as the failed presidency of Barack Obama. A little earlier,... continue reading
On Thursday's Countdown show, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann mixed up the Media Research Center with the group Accuracy in Media, as he linked MRC Founder and President Brent Bozell to an article written by AIM's Roger Aronoff. In the article, titled "Olbermann's Fuzzy Math on Race," Aronoff had responded to Olbermann's Monday "Special Comment" in which he asserted that a scarcity of minorities at Tea Party events amounts to evidence of racism by Tea Party activists. The MSNBC host mistakenly referred to Aronoff and AIM editor Cliff Kincaid as "henchmen" of Bozell, and associated all three men with "racists in... continue reading
Though polls and recent election results illustrate public antipathy to big government deficit spending and a preference for right-leaning Republicans, Thursday's CBS Evening News foresaw an "incumbent backlash" in which Democrats are only more vulnerable because more of them hold national office. Katie Couric asserted "a lot of incumbents are in trouble" before reporter Chip Reid declared it's "an election year that's looking more and more perilous for incumbents" since "the mood in the country is increasingly 'throw the bums out.'" CBS's John Dickerson contended Democrats are only in more peril because they hold power, as if their policies are... continue reading
In a February 17 online article entitled "Charity Case," Newsweek's Issac Stone Fish declared: "Whether they like it or not, China has been very good for Tibetans." Fish's outrageous claim came on the eve of President Obama's Thursday meeting with Tibet's religious leader, the Dalai Lama. While Fish noted how: "Tibetans feel chafed by the restrictions on their political and religious freedoms; many are dissatisfied with Chinese rule....They want self-determination; fair enough." But then dismissed those concerns as he praised Chinese communist rule: "For China's many blunders in mountainous region, it has erected a booming economy there. Looking at growth,... continue reading
On Wednesday night's Hardball (aired only at 12 midnight EST Thursday morning because of the Olympics) Chris Matthews brought on his liberal compatriot from Salon.com Joan Walsh to double team Let Freedom Ring's Colin Hanna and slander the tea partiers as racist nuts that represent the new face of the conservative movement, and dismissed those who seek to reassert the country's founding principles, like those who signed the Mount Vernon Statement, as increasingly irrelevant. [ audio available here ] However it was the two liberals who received a lesson on the Constitution from Hanna who left Matthews so bewildered he... continue reading
New York Times columnist Gail Collins appeared on MSNBC's Morning Joe, Thursday, to worry about "scary," fringe conservatives who will be appearing at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington D.C. Picking out certain panels at the three day event, she fretted, " But, su ddenly, we're back to nullification. All this sort of succession stuff. That part of it is very scary. " [Audio available here .] Collins portrayed those in the conservative establishment as simply trying to keep pace. The columnist dismissed, "The rest of it, you almost sort of a feeling [sic] that the movement has... continue reading
On the one-year anniversary of the Obama administration's "stimulus" spending bill, ABC, CBS and NBC all eagerly corroborated the White House's claims about how it "saved or created" many jobs and staved off economic disaster, though they all offered a range of numbers and definitions (ABC: "800,000 to 2.4 million new jobs," CBS: "about 1.8 million" jobs "saved or created" and NBC: "1.6 to 1.8 million jobs have been created so far." ) ABC and CBS touted anecdotes about companies and government agencies which asserted the spending had prevented layoffs or allowed them to hire new staff. ABC's Jake Tapper... continue reading