NewsBusters Archive

Today's Hollywood TV executives would beg to differ. To them there's no distinctly native criminal class except American businessmen.

The Media Research Center's Business & Media Institute is out with our latest study, the first of a three-part series looking at the media's bias against businessmen.

Almost 10 years ago, the Media Research Center’s Business & Media Institute published “Businessmen Behaving Badly,” which found that businessmen on TV committed more crimes than any other demographic. In this new study, BMI looked at 129 episodes from 12 top-rated dramas on the four networks: ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC. These broadcasts were picked from two “sweeps” months in 2005 – May and November – when networks try to attract the largest audiences to maximize ad dollars.

In this look at primetime, BMI found:

• TV Overwhelmingly Negative toward Business: Negative plots about business and businessmen outnumbered positive ones by almost 4-to-1. Of the 39 episodes that included business-related plots or characters, 30 (77 percent) cast businessmen and commerce in a negative light.
  

I’ve been warning people a lot lately to be careful to not spit their coffee on their keyboards as I present the hysterical rantings of hysterical ranters. Today it is my keyboard taking the bath as it were.

The following is highly typical of the liberal elites in our country: when Americans aren’t interested in a movie, book, or piece of journalism that they believe is either fabulous or socially important, give it an award. Such has happened to Al Gore’s recent piece of …science fiction which, judging from its meager sub-$7 million dollars worth of ticket sales after three weeks, is being shunned by moviegoers much as members of his party typically are at the polls every two years.

As reported by the Associated Press: “The Al Gore documentary 'An Inconvenient Truth' will receive a rare recognition from the Humanitas Prize, which honors screenwriting that helps 'liberate, enrich and unify society.'"

Yes, there's nothing like using junk science and inflammatory rhetoric for making a politic point that benefits you while debasing and castigating others to "liberate, enrich, and unify society." However, here’s the truly delicious punch line with emphasis mine (put your coffee down now):

Here's a few tidbits from this week's news magazines.

1. Newsweek's predictably liberal "Conventional Wisdom Watch" box is clearly unhappy with the good-news-for-Bushies trend. Bush and Rove each get an up arrow. Each also get incredibly whiny blurbs. Bush: "Surprise Baghdad trip boosts troops' morale -- and his own. But he still had to sneak in, three years after invasion." Rove: "Being cleared in CIA leak probe clears his to go back to attacking Democrats as pansies. To the well once too often?"

Answer: No, not when you're pushing withdrawal from Iraq by the end of the year.

2. Newsweek columnist Anna Quindlen inveighs against the death penalty for murderers again. She inveighs against the 1998 execution of Karla Faye Tucker and cites a 1994 Supreme Court opinion by Justice Harry Blackmun. How can we be sure this isn't a seven-year-old editorial? At least this time, she doesn't ask a president to spare a mass murderer like Timothy McVeigh to show his talent for "empathy." 

Fox News's Geraldo Rivera came to Dan Rather’s defense on last night’s syndicated "Geraldo At Large." Teasing an upcoming report on the Rather firing, Rivera let CBS have it: "Still ahead, shame on them. CBS kicks Dan Rather out on the street after 44 years of usually wonderful work." Thankfully, later in the show, Rivera's colleague Laurie Dhue reminded viewers of the reason for Rather's axing: "CBS has agreed to let Dan Rather go after 44 years at the network. The 74-year-old newsman has not been on the air much since he stopped anchoring the 'Evening News' a year ago, six months after running a later-discredited story about President Bush's military service."

During her much hyped June 20 interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, actress Angelina Jolie expressed a view that may shock many of her liberal Hollywood friends:

Just because someone’s Republican doesn’t mean that they don’t also, you know, have the capacity to understand or care about children...

This backhanded compliment was in response to Cooper’s adoring praise of activist Jolie’s "non-partisan" efforts to "affect change" in the world. If by non-partisan Cooper meant indirectly attacking the Bush administration and the Iraq war, then Jolie certainly is "non-partisan."

You can certainly see that the amount of money being spent at war, and the amount of money we are not spending in countries and dealing with situations that could end up in conflict if left unassisted, and then cause war. So, so our priorities are quite strange. So we’re not–we’re missing a lot of opportunities to do a lot of the good that America is used to doing, has a history of doing. And we’re not able to be as generous.

More from the two hour Cooper-Jolie lovefest is behind the cut:

Alan Caruba writes in the Philadelphia Inquirer that the media never reported on the supporting arguments Ann Coulter used in her criticism of the 9-11 "Jersey Girls." To attack someone's statements, but neglecting to address how the person backs them up, is a classic media technique for delegitimizing or even dehumanizing an opponent.

Coulter noted, as she does in her book, that these "Jersey Girls," after receiving huge amounts in compensation for their losses, then went public blaming President Bush for having failed to anticipate and prevent the 9/11 attacks. The mainstream media made much of them while ignoring some very key factors that undermined their views. Coulter, of course, did not.

Back from a break for heart surgery, PBS talk-show host Charlie Rose devoted his entire hour-long show Monday night to Al Gore, promoting his doom-documentary "An Inconvenient Truth." Rose pressed Gore comfortably from the left: if the president has an "intellectually dishonest" position ignoring the facts, and why no one is having an "enlightened conversation" with President Bush on global warming. Once Rose shifted to Iraq, he laughed at Gore when they discussed whether Bush knew he would invade Iraq as he campaigned in 2000: "I don’t think Dick Cheney had told him yet that he was going to invade Iraq.” This, after Gore said he was trying to convey a "textured and subtle" foreign policy mindset.

The media reporting on Enron was aggressive from day one. As well it should be. But another huge corporate scandal rife with political connections has been virtually ignored by the media: the $40 billion Fannie Mae fiasco, presided over by Clinton alumni like Franklin Raines and Jamie Gorelick. Today the Washington Times ran an op-ed by the MRC's Business & Media Institute Director Dan Gainor about the media's double standard. Dan's piece is on page A18 of the print edition, and available on the Web here.

Here's a taste:

When most people hear the word "Enron," they mentally complete the phrase by adding the word "scandal." As reporter Lester Holt of NBC's "Today" put it in a Jan. 1 story, "Enron has been the poster child, if you will, of corporate scandals."

Rachel Sklar, formerly of Mediabistro's FishbowlNY blog and now the "Eat the Press" specialist at the Huffington Post (no "Green Acres" accents required), reports on what she calls a "cheap but hilarious" shot at congressional Republicans on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show." It's apparently funny to blame Republican softball players for the floods in New Orleans, as fake-reporter Dan Bakkedahl put it:

The Daily Show's Dan Bakkedahl reported last night on the crisis gripping Congressional-league softball in D.C. this season after the Republican players split off into their own league in response to more inclusive regulations proposed by Democrats. According to the Wall Street Journal (and The Daily Show), the Republicans "seceded" from the league after the Democratic commissioner, Gary Caruso, permitted below-average teams to compete in the playoffs. The WSJ and Daily Show cited several emails accusing the league of being "all about Softball Welfare" and accusing Caruso of "punishing success and rewarding failure - He's a Democrat. Waddya' expect?"