NewsBusters Archive

Apparently ABC's news division is not content with reporting the news and spinning it to promote a liberal agenda. It now devotes a whole program to manufacturing fake scenarios in the hopes of pushing a liberal agenda.

Take the program, “What Would You Do?,” (WWYD) which began years ago as an occasional segment on the Primetime newsmagazine program and used actors in hidden camera situations to see how bystanders would react.  Just in time for Gay Pride month, for the June 7 edition, WWYD set up a fake situation involving a basketball player  coming out to his teammates and coach. Of course, the team and the coach were all actors playing out a skit whereby they bashed their now out-of-the-closet teammate before unsuspecting spectators.

Chuck Todd on Thursday hectored the Republican Party for moving "decidedly to the right" on abortion and daring to take up legislation instead of focusing on immigration and jobs. Talking to other liberal journalists on his Daily Rundown program, Todd lectured, "But, it does strike me as the Republican Party has forgotten how to talk about abortion."

The MSNBC journalist, referring to comments made by Republican Trent Franks and recent GOP legislation in the states, added, "But the Republican Party has moved decidedly to the right on the issue of abortion, the lawmakers." Decidedly to the right? The Republican Party platform on abortion has been explicitly pro-life since 1980.

Liberals’ obsession with the worn-out GOP “war on women” meme entered a new phase on June 13 following comments made by Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.). During a committee hearing in which the congressman introduced legislation that would ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy, Mr. Franks claimed that:

Before, when my friends on the left side of the aisle here tried to make rape and incest the subject – because, you know, the incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low.

Banks are bad because they make a profit on things requested by their customers, according to both NBC and CBS. The two networks highlighted a study released June 11 by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau [CFPB] that said banks made $12.6 billion in overdraft fees and non-sufficient funds from bounced checks in 2011. Though only 20 percent of customers actually opt-in for overdraft protection, NBC called these fees “one of the most common financial mistakes Americans make.”

Anchor Lester Holt opened the segment with alarmist, accusatory language: “A government report out today makes it clear just how much this country’s banks are profiting from your mistakes. We’re talking about those hefty overdraft charges when checking accounts are overdrawn. Well it turns out the banks are now making most of their fees from these penalties.”

Bill Maher made a tasteless joke about Sarah Palin's Down Syndrome son Trig last Saturday, and the former governor of Alaska is fighting back.

On Wednesday evening, Palin called Maher out on Twitter saying, "I hope [someone] flattens your lily white wimpy a#*":

For the last four years, conservatives have been scratching their heads, wondering what it would take to get the so-called elite media to sit up and take notice of President Obama’s penchant for seizing powers not granted to him under the Constitution.

The answer, as it turns out, was an offense so egregious that it caused Joe Biden to bellyache to CBS News:

As the George Zimmerman trail progresses with the selection of the jury, media has renewed its coverage of the issue which can at times border on obsessive. Last Friday night, Black Entertainment Television (BET) decided to throw their hat into the already incredibly crowded ring and provide their version of news coverage of the George Zimmerman trial and preceding events in a half-hour special entitled, Justice for Trayvon: Our Son Is Your Son. The title plays off of a quote by Trayvon’s mother Sybrina that was made at a rally in support of her son.

The entire controversy centers on the 2012 shooting of teenager Trayvon Martin by then neighborhood watch leader George Zimmerman and the ensuing lawsuit by the state of Florida. The prosecution charged Zimmerman with murder in the second degree while he claims to have shot Martin in self-defense after being attacked by the teen.

While a series of Obama administration scandals have left many Americans questioning the trustworthiness of government officials and bureaucrats, NBC News decided to use the recent National Security Agency leaks by Booz Allen contractor Edward Snowden to bash the role of the private sector in assisting with intelligence gathering. [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Chief medical editor Nancy Snyderman summed up the network's smear campaign during a panel discussion on Wednesday's NBC Today about the NSA snooping controversy: "...the number of contractors who aren't government workers, who are hired because they're young and geeky and they have computer skills....But they also are rather unmoored, they don't have a sense of patriotism, they don't really belong anywhere, so their sense of right and wrong is very different than how we see it."

A new Gallup poll released on Monday found more Americans approve of former President George W. Bush than disapprove, for the first time since 2005. MSNBC’s weekday lunchtime anchor Alex Wagner just couldn’t stand the news.

The left-wing host expressed her dismay with the new poll on Wednesday’s Now, huffing that the “46 percent of Americans [who disapprove of Bush] apparently still have their memory intact.” Wagner has made it a tradition on her show to berate President Bush, even five years after he left office. Just two weeks ago, you may recall, she used a report on Bush’s bike ride with wounded veterans to mock the former president’s intelligence and decision-making – with barely a mention of the bike ride itself.