NewsBusters Archive

This past April, celebrity Obama donors Beyonce Knowles and husband Jay-Z took a controversial trip to the communist country of Cuba. Knowles appeared on Monday's Good Morning America and Nightline, but ABC continued to offer no skepticism about the details of the visit. Instead, reporter Amy Robach discovered her inner-entertainment journalist, wondering, "What did you make of the controversy?"

That was the extent of Robach's questions on the topic. No mention of the fact that Knowles and her husband raised over $4 million for Obama in 2012, prior to being given special permission to make the trip.  (American tourists are barred from traveling there.) Robach simply summarized, "But the busy star took a break last month, traveling to Cuba with her husband Jay-Z for their fifth wedding anniversary, igniting a firestorm from lawmakers." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

The air was thick with disingenuousness on Saturday’s Today show as NBC conducted a long-distance interview with the daughter of the slain Sandy Hook Elementary School principal. Co-anchor Erica Hill brought up the charge that Erica Lafferty has been used as a prop by the gun control crowd. Of course, in the process, NBC was using Lafferty as a prop during that very interview.

Lafferty was in Houston, ostensibly hoping to meet with leaders and members of the NRA at their convention. Ever since the Sandy Hook shooting, Lafferty has been active in the push for stricter gun laws, and Hill mentioned this. But then the anchor added, “You have also been accused of being used as a prop. Is there anything that you think you could have done differently to change the outcome in Washington?” Lafferty scoffed at the notion: [Video below. MP3 audio here.]

We here at NewsBusters are often extremely critical of MSNBC’s Morning Joe as it often sets the agenda for the daily bias on the cable network. There are a few times, such as the Gosnell infanticide trial, when Morning Joe will actually prompt the rest of the liberal network to begin covering a story that it had previously ignored. Unfortunately that's not the case with Dick Harpootlian's racist attack on Gov. Nikki Haley (R-S.C.) at a fundraising dinner with Vice President Joe Biden in attendance.

You may recall that we noted that on May 6, Morning Joe ran a brief segment on the outgoing chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, Dick Harpootlian grousing that the Palmetto State's governor, who, like fellow conservative Southern governor Bobby Jindal is of Indian ethnic heritage, should be sent, “back wherever the hell she came from and this country can move forward.” 

Tuesday marks the six month anniversary of Republican Ted Cruz’s election to the United States Senate, but rather than the traditional honeymoon, the liberal media have gone on the attack against the Tea Party hero and emerging 2016 presidential candidate and his conservative beliefs. In their own liberal grassroots circles, leftists have even gone as far to openly hope for Cruz’s death, as the Daily Kos screeched: “Give this man enough rope and a tree, please.”  When former Bill Clinton political strategist James Carville, on Sunday, actually credited Cruz for being “talented and fearless,” it marked a rare moment when TV viewers heard something nice about the Senator.  

From CNN’s Wolf Blitzer lecturing him on his responsible fiscal cliff stance: “You’ve got to deal with reality,” to the Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart calling Cruz a “jerk,” to MSNBC’s Chris Matthews claiming hate groups “must love Ted Cruz,” the liberal media have assaulted the outspoken conservative over the last six months.

The following is a list of the Top 10 Most Obnoxious Anti-Ted Cruz quotes from the past six months: (video compilation after the jump)

Washington Post TV critic Hank Stuever is not a fan of the new PBS show on the Constitution starring NPR game-show host Peter Sagal. He adores a saleswoman who says to Sagal, “You are so conceited.” The article's title is "The right to remain just a little too cute."

Stuever found the man from NPR didn’t fit well in the red states like Montana. “At a point where he couldn’t possibly sound more nasally, effete and urban, Sagal asks: ‘I say this as a man who owns six bicycles, but why does a man need to own so many rifles?’”

Mainstream media’s limited reporting on the murder trial of Philadelphia abortionist Dr. Kermit Gosnell has been obvious.  You might think that CNN, the self-styled “Most Trusted Name in News," would pay more attention to a case involving over 250 criminal counts, including ones for first-degree murder. 

You’d be wrong.  Today, CNN’s Newsroom occupied six hours of air time.  The Gosnell trial was mentioned only twice.  Anchor Wolf Blitzer reported:

In Philadelphia, the 72-year-old abortion doctor, Kermit Gosnell is awaiting his fate. He's accused of first degree murder for allegedly killing babies born alive during late term abortions. Jurors are now in their fifth day of deliberating after not reaching a verdict Friday. 

Despite being largely ignored by the national press, has the murder trial against Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell effected a permanent change on the debate over abortion? Yes, argues Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, one of several major pro-life groups. Now that the gruesome reality of partial birth abortions have been revealed in a court of law by the government itself, things will never be the same, Dannenfelser argues.

“It will be very difficult from here on out to talk about at least post-viability abortions without remembering those images and that there are two sets of rights involved here,” she told NewsBusters in a interview.

"Mainstream media" are alarmed by reports that billionaires Charles and David Koch are considering the purchase of Tribune Company's eight daily newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times.

When Warren Buffett spent $344 million to purchase 28 newspapers, there were mostly sighs of relief from journalists glad to keep their jobs. However, reaction to reports of the Koch brothers' interest in buying the Tribune papers was quite different. Charles and David Koch, you see, are conservative libertarians, not liberals. Will the Kochs, gasp, force their conservatism on readers? Will they sully journalism's good name? Truth is, no one knows what the Kochs plan to do.

Apparently not even Chris Matthews listens to Chris Matthews. On Monday's Hardball, the liberal anchor compared the speeches at the National Rifle Association's 2013 convention to the Nazis. Three minutes later, he decried the use of Nazi comparisons. On the same program, Matthews insisted that the Republican Party has forgiven the assassination  of GOP President Abraham Lincoln.

As he played clips of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck at this past weekend's convention, Matthews railed, "First of all, it's Hitlerian, generally speaking, demagoguery. It's always about righteous indignation. All great demagogic speakers talk about how they're coming to get us." The host then played a clip of Beck showing a satirical poster of Michael Bloomberg as Vladimir Lenin. Mistaking this for Nazis, Matthews huffed, "But this idea of making moderate politicians like mike Bloomberg, who's really a centrist, into some sort of...what? A Nazi?" [See video below. MP3 audio here.]