MSNBC and the Big Picture

In an effort to make the upcoming Senate vote on tort reform for firearms manufacturers appear as nothing more than a squabble between political parties, MSNBC ran an AP story on July 26 leading with:

Senate Republicans on Tuesday moved the National Rifle Association’s top priority ahead of a $491 billion defense bill, setting up a vote on legislation to shield firearms manufacturers and dealers from lawsuits over gun crime.[1]

The Associated Press, for years considered by many to be an ‘objective’ source for news, has been out of the partisan closet most noticeably since the onset of the War on Terror. The leftward tilt of their coverage is made more maddening since they are ubiquitous; appearing in both news giants like USA Today and your own small-town paper.

This week, in a little number called, “Islam Dominates Iraq's Draft Constitution,” they predict the future:

Framers of Iraq's constitution will designate Islam as the main source of legislation - a departure from the model set down by U.S. authorities during the occupation - according to a draft published Tuesday.

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CBS legal analyst Andrew Cohen makes clear his disdain for conservative congressional Republicans, particularly their view that Congress should rein in the power of the courts, by the legislative and constitutional remedies availed of Congress by the Constitution, in his latest online column, "Lady Justice Rising." The extent to which Congress can and should limit the scope of federal courts is a reasonable debate to have---particularly after the Court's recent 5-4 Kelo v. New London decision which ran roughshod over property rights and the traditional understanding of the limits of government's power to seize private property---but not to Cohen, who praises outgoing Justice Sandra Day O'Connor for her criticism of Republican Hill leaders regarding their recent rhetoric on curtailing the courts in his latest opinion piece on CBSNews.com.

This morning's (Thursday's) New York Times has a front-page "news analysis" of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts' world view, with the headline branding Roberts: "An Advocate for the Right."

So for yesterday's TimesWatch, MRC's Clay Waters went back to 1993 to see how the Times assessed onetime ACLU attorney Ruth Bader Ginsburg when Bill Clinton nominated her for the Supreme Court. Sure enough, the June 27, 1993 headline on Ginsburg: "Balanced Jurist at Home in the Middle."

The Associated Press ran a story on 27 July, 2005, which demonstrates a gross misunderstanding of Judge Roberts position on legislation by Congress to reduce the jurisdiction of the federal courts.  The title of that article is "Under Reagan, Roberts Opposed Efforts to Strip Supreme Court Jurisdiction."

At the heart of the story is this paragraph:

"The issue of so-called court-stripping legislation crossed Roberts' desk while he worked at the Justice Department in 1982, when [Attorney General] Smith asked his young assistant to argue both sides of the case. The issue to be addressed was the constitutionality of a bill to strip the Supreme Court of its ability to rule on cases challenging voluntary school prayer legislation then pending in Congress."

While I'm posting, for humor, an item I saw Monday night on the CBS Evening News -- a line Bob Schieffer couldn't have gotten away with. After a story on people who subscribe to satellite television in their SUVs (one of whom had become a couch potato in his car), substitute anchor John Roberts ended the show imagining out loud his version of the good life: "So let's see. Driving the car, talking on the cell phone while watching the Naked News. Good idea."

Ted Turner: Global Warming Worse Than Iran, Causing Drought

Keith Olbermann has the habit of taking gratuitous jabs at Fox News – which one can find in almost any type of story on his Countdown show – and so far, he's struck twice this week.

On Wednesday night, July 20, while reading an item on the death of former Washington Week in Review host Paul Duke, he said, "When he retired from that same chair two decades later, the show was a staple of national public affairs broadcasting, aired on 300 stations, getting four million viewers, which would be more than any program in cable news, or even those cable networks that pretend they cover news." Vague, I know, but I've seen the show enough times to know he was referring to FNC. And then tonight, he took a more direct shot at Fox News during which he employed the same theme of FNC not being a real news channel.

Perhaps an attempt to reignite the media firestorm over Karl Rove, a front page story in Thursday's Washington Post based on a secret June 2003 State Department memo "central" to the Valerie Plame leak investigation and leaked to staff writers Walter Pincus and Jim VandeHei was given a misleading headline which prompts readers into thinking Valerie Plame's was widely known in the Bush administration as that of a covert CIA agent. For a government official such as Karl Rove to knowingly reveal the name of a covert agent is the crime which lies at the heart of the grand jury inquiry into the matter, and at the heart of liberal media interest in the story. A slightly more accurate but still misleading headline was posted on the Post's home page, though not the actual Web version of the article, which correctly notes that the memo was marked secret, not Plame's name.

Not an instance of bias, but a touch of humor: The Late Late Show's host Craig Ferguson gently ribbed his network's entertainment and news lineup during his opening monologue last night/this early morning, scoring laughs off the tedium of CBS's 60 Minutes by comparing that show to braving long lines at theme parks.

“When I first moved to southern California, I went to Disneyland, it was bigger than my hometown. Really, why, I get lost. I loved it though I thought, if I ever have a kid I’m going to bring him or her to Disneyland, and the time is coming, because my son, I think, he’s four years old. He’s ready. He’s, you know, I’m getting little clues, he’s saying things like, ‘Daddy, will you take me to Disneyland.’ I’m ambivalent about taking him to an ABC/Disney theme park. You know, I wish CBS had a theme park too. Imagine the rides? It’d be fantastic. Everybody Rides Raymond, that’d be nice, that’d be nice. CSI of the Caribbean would be a lot, I dunno, 60 Minutes, waiting in line, I dunno, anyway...”

In an interview taped a couple of days ago but aired on this morning's (Thursday's) show, Katie Couric asked Bill Clinton whether he thought Executive Branch employees should be fired for any ethical lapse, whether or not it was criminal:

"President Clinton as you well know President Bush has been under fire recently because Karl Rove allegedly released the identity of a CIA agent to reporters. President Bush has said it's a fireable offense now if a crime was committed but in your view is the ethical violation enough to warrant dismissal?"

The funniest part -- Couric seemed oblivous to the irony of asking this question of Bill Clinton, the walking, talking poster boy of getting away with "ethical violations," and even perjury and obstruction of justice, because the media would let him get away with anything short of a criminal conviction.

NYT reporter Hassan Fattah touts a left-wing anti-war report on civilian casualties in Iraq, a Wednesday story topped with a headline that betrays none of the politicized controversy over the report. Instead the head lends the hodge-podge "report" (basically a collection of news clippings) a false sense of authority: "Civilian Toll in Iraq Is Placed at Nearly 25,000." As if it's the authorative word on the matter. Yet the researchers are affiliated with far-left outfits like Counterpunch and Peace UK (and, strangely, a lot of music departments all over England). Hardly a scholarly "report."

"Michael Moore, Truth Teller." -- July 18 headline in the NYT's art section.