1. Cafferty Cracks About Rove's Size, Giddy Over Him Going to Jail CNN's Jack Cafferty, on Monday afternoon's The Situation Room, took a cheap shot at Karl Rove's weight and expressed delight in the possibility Rove will be indicted. Just past 3pm EDT, Cafferty announced his question of the hour: "What should Karl Rove do if he is indicted?" Cafferty then answered his own question: "He might want to get measured for one of those extra large orange jump suits, Wolf, 'cause looking at old Karl, I'm not sure that he'd, they'd be able to zip him into the regular... continue reading
1. "Embarrassing" Bush Event, CNN Heralds Kucinich's Spontaneity The network obsession, with the ordinary preparation for a presidential event involving nervous participants, continued on Friday morning. Plugging upcoming stories at the top of Good Morning America, ABC's Charles Gibson referred to "an embarrassing, staged photo-op." Diane Sawyer soon cited the Thursday video event with President Bush and troops in Iraq as a "new embarrassment" for the administration. NBC's Today made the incident its story of the day as Katie Couric announced: "On Close-Up this morning, is the Bush administration using staged events to sell the war in Iraq?" Over on... continue reading
1. Shocked, Just Shocked Nets Hype "Staged" Bush Event with Troops Thursday's NBC Nightly News led, yes led, with how, as anchor Brian Williams put it, President Bush had that morning conducted "a staged event" via satellite with ten U.S. soldiers and one Iraqi soldier in Iraq. "Today's encounter was billed as spontaneous," Williams intoned. "Instead, it appeared to follow a script." Andrea Mitchell warned that "the troops were coached on how to answer the Commander-in-Chief" and, indeed, not until two minutes into her three-minute story -- after showing clips of how a DOD official had told the soldiers the... continue reading
1. Olbermann: Conspiracy of Terror Alerts to Cover Bush's Bad Days On Wednesday night, viewers of MSNBC's Countdown got to see host Keith Olbermann elaborate on his latest conspiracy theory during a segment titled "The Nexus of Politics and Terror," in which Olbermann outlined ten of what he referred to in the segment's introduction as "13 similar coincidences -- a political downturn for the administration, followed by a terror event, a change in alert status, an arrest, a warning." After plugging this special segment on his show for the last couple of nights, the Countdown host devoted 24 minutes of... continue reading
1. Warren: Conservatives Never Pleased, So Bush Should Lie to Them? The opposition from the religious right faced by the fictional Republican presidential candidate on NBC's The West Wing, symbolizes for Jim Warren, the former Washington Bureau Chief for the Chicago Tribune who is now a Deputy Managing Editor for the paper, how real-life conservatives, upset over the Harriet Miers pick, will never be satisfied. On Tuesday's Hardball on MSNBC, Warren admired how the fictional drama's Alan Alda character "confronts a top Christian Right official who insists on a public pledge that Alan Alda, if elected President, will only pick... continue reading
1. CBS Challenges Marine Recruit's Linking of 9/11 to Battle in Iraq After Monday's CBS Evening News showed a clip of a Marine recruit at Parris Island explaining that he volunteered because "I want to be fighting the evils that did what they did to us on September 11th," reporter Sharyn Alfonsi related how "all three of the recruits we sat down with say they enlisted because of September 11th." Alfonsi, however, couldn't let such an apparent link between 9/11 and the war in Iraq go unchallenged and so she quickly admonished the naive recruits as she stressed how "politicians... continue reading
1. Roberts: Opposition to Miers "Sexism" and Fear of "Pragmatism" During the roundtable segment on Sunday's This Week with George Stephanopoulos, ABC reporter Cokie Roberts charged that "I do think there's sexism here" and went on to approvingly cite a left-wing Democratic Senator: "I do think that there is a degree of sexism, as Barbara Mikulski has also said, and I do think that there is a certain Ivy League prejudice going on here." Roberts contended that Miers' "experience on the Dallas city council showed her to be a great pragmatist and that's what people are really worried about." Roberts... continue reading
1. Olbermann: Subway Alert to Distract from Rove, Bush Like McCarthy Another terror alert, another chance for MSNBC's Keith Olbermann to question whether it's politically motivated. Talking about the terror threat to the New York City subway system, a supposed threat revealed by local officials, Olbermann nonetheless suggested it was announced in order to distract from news that Karl Rove would make another grand jury appearance: "Stop what you're thinking. It's just an amazing coincidence. The terrorists just happened to wait to make these threats until there's bad news about the administration that it needs to preempt. Just a coincidence."... continue reading
1. Only NBC's Mitchell Unaware of Brownback's Criticism of Miers Concluding her Tuesday NBC Nightly News story on conservative resistance to the nomination of Harriet Miers, Andrea Mitchell asserted that while "critics on the right say" that it "leaves them depressed and disappointed," their "opposition may not matter for Miers' confirmation. So far, no Republican Senator has joined the chorus of critics." But those who watched ABC or CBS heard something very different. On World News Tonight, ABC's Terry Moran reported that "in a sign of potential trouble ahead, Republican Senator San Brownback, a leading conservative on the Judiciary Committee,... continue reading
1. CBS's Nomination Liberal Prism, "Even Far Right" Will Like Miers All three broadcast network evening newscasts on Monday focused attention on the disappointment expressed by conservatives at President Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court, but the CBS Evening News went the furthest in reporting the selection through a liberal prism. Anchor Bob Schieffer employed "rights" language which put the liberal position in a positive light: "Social conservatives wanted someone who is on the record against gay rights and abortion rights. Many liberals wanted someone who is for abortion rights." John Roberts, using phraseology favorable to abortion... continue reading