NewsBusters Archive

In the only network morning show interview with Rick Santorum in the wake of his three-state victory on Tuesday, NBC Today co-host Ann Curry on Friday pestered the former Pennsylvania senator on whether he would "commit" not to do any negative campaigning and attempted to portray his recent comments on women serving in military combat roles as a gaffe.

Curry put this question to Santorum early in the interview: "...it is clear that negative campaigning generates votes....aren't you going to now have to go negative? Will you commit that your – you and your PACs will not? Or are you going to have to now?"

"This time, they went too far," MRC President and NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell said of the Obama administration's rule to force Catholic institutions to violate their conscience on contraception, and he scolded the media for refusing to cover the controversy at first.

"The national news media has no understanding of what goes on in the Catholic church. This is massive inside the Catholic church, and think about how long it took -- it took CBS 10 days to do a story on this and they only devoted seconds to it," Bozell argued on the February 9 edition of FNC's Hannity, during his regular "Media Mash" segment. "It took NBC and ABC 17 days to arrive at this story. This is the biggest story dealing with an assault on religious freedom in the history of the Republic."

[MP3 audio here; video and additional transcript below the fold]

With the number of numbskulls on the airwaves today, I'm not sure I'd called MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell the dumbest man on television.

But that's how real estate tycoon Donald Trump referred to the "Last Word" host on Twitter Thursday also calling him the "poor man's Ed Schultz...and Al Sharpton":

If President Obama didn't already see a sea of red flags, a thunderbolt from Chris Matthews this morning should surely inform him that he has badly misstepped with his decision to force Catholic institutions to provide services that violate their religious principles

Appearing on Morning Joe, Matthews said that "even liberal Catholics are going to be proud" of Catholic leaders who stand up to Obama, and indeed that the Catholic response "may come to civil disobedience."  Video after the jump.

On Thursday's The Last Word, MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell disproved claims by liberals that eight states already have regulations that require Catholic employers to provide health insurance coverage of contraceptives for their employees, as the liberal host informed viewers that his staff had looked into the laws of these states and found the assertions to be untrue. (Video below)

O'Donnell declared to his viewers:

CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson has distinguished herself by reporting on the "Fast & Furious" gunwalking scandal in the Obama Justice Department. The conservative media watchdog group Accuracy in Media awarded her their Reid Irvine Award for investigative reporting at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday -- only Attkisson failed to appear. Instead, Michael Calderone at The Huffington Post wrote CBS Washington bureau chief Christopher Isham accepted the award in Atkisson's honor and said that the network "is very proud of Sharyl's groundbreaking reporting."

Attkisson is the first reporter from a non-conservative media organization to receive AIM's award. In response to the honor, a CBS News spokesperson said, "CBS News journalists are regularly honored by a broad spectrum of organizations for their outstanding original reporting." But liberals were outraged at Attkisson's apparent intention to accept the award in person, that it would glorify AIM and conservatives. Former CBS News man Ed Fouhy accused Attkisson of being a "pawn" before the award was presented.

Black Memphis-area Republican congressional candidate Charlotte Bergmann made a spash on the Internet in a viral video recently as the victim of a tense, racially-charged interview with a local radio host who berated her as a racial sellout. If this is the first you've heard of her story, however, it's probably because the liberal media have ignored it.

Bergmann is attending this week's Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, D.C., and our friends at MRCTV caught up with her earlier today. You can find the full 10-minute chat embedded below the page break:

National Journal's Ron Brownstein challenged the assumption that the Bush tax cuts created much economic growth, noting that they failed to stem the rising number of Americans living in poverty. Brownstein made his liberal points Thursday morning on CNN to guest Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.).

"What in that record gives you confidence that extending those tax cuts will produce better economic growth in the future than they've contributed to so far in the past?" the CNN analyst posed to Ryan, citing that the number of Americans living in poverty increased by 8 million after President Bush enacted his tax cuts.

In his Thursday interview of the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins, CNN host Don Lemon questioned Perkins if his group had come out strongly enough against the beating of a homosexual man in Atlanta.

The conservative organization opposes the lifestyle of homosexuality, and Lemon is an openly-gay anchor who has said before that he aims to "change minds" through his reporting. Lemon has continually promoted gay rights on the air while largely ignoring those supporting the other side of the issue. [Video below the break.]