ABC, CBS, and NBC have largely punted in covering the protests against the leftist government in Venezuela. Since Monday, only NBC Nightly News has devoted a full report on the demonstrations in the South American country. Altogether, NBC has aired just over two minutes of reporting on the story. Brian Williams also stood out for explicitly mentioning the political ideology of the regime: "Many...are feeling increasingly let down by the socialist government." [MP3 audio available here; video below the jump]

The network's Big Three competitors trail far behind in their coverage, with CBS only mentioning the protests during a 24-second news brief on Wednesday's CBS This Morning. The network's evening newscast, CBS Evening News, has yet to cover the story. ABC has devoted three news briefs on its morning and evening newscasts since Wednesday, for a total of 52 seconds of air time.

MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell on Friday openly plotted strategy with a senior Democratic adviser, complimenting him on successful efforts to convince Americans think that raising the debt ceiling wasn't "running up the credit card." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Mitchell talked to Doug Hattaway, a member of Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign. She praised, "You were one of the advisors to persuade the Democrats that for this round of the debt ceiling debate they had to re-frame it so that it wasn't the Democrats wanting to spend more money." Mitchell unselfconsciously continued, "As hard as many of us in the media tried to persuade people, this is money that's already been spent, we're just paying the bills."

As much as MSNBC's left-wing prime time hosts portray themselves to be on the side of the workers, none of the anchors have responded to 10,000 petitions delivered to the network on Thursday from NBC writers and producers demanding more workplace rights.

Talking to TVNewser, Writers Guild of America East communications director Jason Gordon pointed out the hypocrisy of the liberal channel: "The company can't have it both ways – presenting the strong, progressive voices of the MSNBC hosts while at the same time depriving the [NBCUniversal] Peacock [Productions] employees of their own voices on the job."

 Just days after New York City's prominent liberal mayor instructed local drivers to be more responsible, Bill de Blasio's motorcade was caught on camera speeding, weaving in and out of lanes and blowing through stop signs. On the networks, however, only CBS This Morning bothered to cover the story.

Norah O'Donnell began by suggesting that de Blasio "could be in for a bumpy ride" and explained, that his "motorcade was spotted speeding and breaking several other traffic laws, Thursday." According to O'Donnell, "If the driver had been stopped, he could have racked up his citations to have his license suspended." [See video below. MP3 audio here.] NBC's Today and ABC's Good Morning America avoided the story.

The Obamas have had few more obsequious media allies than NBC's Jimmy Fallon. Now that he's taking over the hallowed ground of "The Tonight Show," Fallon's proven ability to spread his reach into viral videos on YouTube promises to become even more politically potent.

Fallon's Obama-friendly sketches and interviews have become immediate "news" grist for the Comcast corps at NBC and MSNBC. The same sensation happens when Fallon is ripping into a Republican.

According to an influential entertainment magazine, Piers Morgan's ratings are in a death spiral and the reason might be his obsession with attacking Second Amendment rights of Americans. Variety writer Rick Kissell related the devastating news: "Tuesday’s telecast, which included coverage of the uprisings in Kiev and an interview with Rudy Giuliani, drew the show’s second smallest audience to date in the key news demo of adults 25-54 (50,000)."

He added, "'Piers Morgan Live' has fallen below the 300,000-viewer mark on seven other occasions in February. While the Olympics could be blamed for some of that, ""Piers Morgan' is drawing just a fraction of the audience attracted by competing shows on CNN and MSNBC." The British Morgan has railed about the "absurdity of the 2nd Amendment" and lectured Americans: "I'd make it illegal for anyone under 25 to buy a gun of any kind."

Washington Post reporter Zachary Goldfarb caused spit takes in Washington on Friday morning. At the top left of the paper, the headline is "Obama budget to rebuff austerity." Or, as Goldfarb described the new White House budget document, "Obama will call for an an end to the era of austerity that has dogged his presidency..."

Is there nobody at the Post who can properly understand that the largest deficits in American history have occurred in the past five years? This was quickly mocked on Twitter:

The New York Times defined it as newsworthy that Rolling Stone's hard-left fancifier-fulminator Matt Taibbi is taking a new job with Pierre Omidyar's First Look Media. The headline was bland: "Start-Up Site Hires Critic of Wall St." The Times had no ideological label except "fierce critic of Wall Street." That's probably about the label Karl Marx would get if he wrote today.

The account was short enough to somehow exclude Taibbi's infamous 2005 article on "52 Funniest Things About the Upcoming Death of the Pope." The Times account waited until the end to quote typically rabid or possibly drug-fueled Taibbi passages, puffing it as "vivid writing and colorful language" in a "now-famous metaphor" (which a quick Nexis search demonstrates The New York Times has now quoted 24 times):

If there was any doubt that MSNBC is a mouthpiece for liberal activism, Chris Hayes should have erased it on Wednesday’s edition of his program All In. Hayes was discussing MSNBC’s favorite current topic – the Chris Christie “Bridgegate” saga – with Dan Cantor, national director of the ultra-liberal Working Families Party. [Video below. MP3 audio here.]

Near the end of the discussion, Cantor optimistically declared his belief that Christie will be defeated in the end, thanks in part to Cantor’s own organization:

Liberal celebrities finally did something useful: they proved that it’s easier to support socialism when you have toilet paper and electricity.

Wealthy Hollywood-types have the luxury to fawn over Venezuela and its authoritarian leaders, but many Venezuelans do not have share this rosy perspective. Reuters reported that anti-government activists have taken to the streets in protest against President Nicolás Maduro’s socialist regime. Several people have been killed, including a beauty queen.

Find the thought of marriage’s “incredibly intense contract” with its big commitment “horrifying?” Think monogamy might be too hard and result in a “sexless marriage” that leads to divorce? The answer is simple: marry more than one person! Or, don’t marry them. Or sort of marry them … just make sure there are more than two of you in the relationship.

Or so “polyamorous lawyer” Diana Adams told The Atlantic.

Despite the disturbing news on Wednesday that the Federal Communications Commission had developed a controversial plan to investigate television and radio newsrooms across the country, the broadcast networks of NBC, ABC, and CBS completely ignored the potential threat to press freedom.

In a February 10 Op/Ed for the Wall Street Journal, current FCC commissioner Ajit Pai warned: "Last May the FCC proposed an initiative to thrust the federal government into newsrooms across the country. With its 'Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs,' or CIN, the agency plans to send researchers to grill reporters, editors and station owners about how they decide which stories to run."

Left-wing activist turned CNN host Van Jones ran to John Kerry's defense on Wednesday's Crossfire, after co-host Newt Gingrich slammed Kerry as "delusional" for recently hyping climate change as "the world's most fearsome weapon of mass destruction." Jones retorted, "It's not delusional to focus on climate disruption. It's delusional not to."

Moments earlier, the former Obama green jobs czar himself made a doom-and-gloom prediction about the hypothetical effects of what he labeled "climate disruption:" [MP3 audio available here; video below the jump]

Does Zachary Roth ever get tired of hyperventilating over new voting laws being passed across the country? He must not because yet again the MSNBC reporter freaked out over the Republican-controlled legislature “restricts the right to vote.” Just in the last year, Roth has penned more than 50 articles on the subject of voting and how the GOP wants to make it harder for Democrats and minorities to vote.  

The February 20 article began with Roth groaning that “Ohio lawmakers passed two restrictive Republican voting billsWednesday night, raising the prospect that casting a ballot this fall could be much more difficult, especially for minority voters.”