NewsBusters Archive

On NBC's "Daily Nightly" blog, Senior Producer Gena Fitzgerald noted the Senate's passage of an official-English bill as a sad occasion, and she puzzled about "what this means to a nation that’s always seen itself as a cultural melting pot." But Gena, how does the country "melt" together without immigrants learning a little English? She made it sound like one of those annoying Republican initiatives like renaming "freedom fries," and decided to mock it:

But it does give us pause to wonder: If the Congress succeeds in making this an English-only nation, perhaps they should start on Capitol Hill and see how it goes first. They’ll have to begin with the nation’s motto: "E Pluribus Unum." That would be Latin, and means "One from Many." Senators, if you all pitch in on weekends, it should not take long to redo all those government office buildings, and then the country's currency.

On Friday's Countdown show on MSNBC, substitute host Brian Unger lived up to Keith Olbermann's habitually liberal standards as he portrayed recent efforts by Senate Republicans to declare English America's official language and to ban gay marriage as a "hard turn to the right." He hearkened back to the "exclusionary rhetoric" of the 1992 Republican convention that spelled a "political disaster" for Republicans, and wondered if it could be "1992 all over again." Regarding the proposed gay marriage ban, Unger referred to it as part of the "far right's greatest hit list," and characterized the Senate Judiciary Committee vote for a constitutional amendment as "tossing social conservatives a straight-as-an-arrow bone."

In spite of a recent Zogby poll showing 84 percent of Americans, including 77 percent of Hispanics, support making English the nation's official language, Unger teased the show wondering if Republicans would "alienate the American middle": "Could these two right turns alienate the American middle? What playing to the Republican base could mean for the President and voters come midterm election." He introduced the show by recounting the 1992 Republican convention which renominated former President George H.W. Bush: "The 1992 Republican convention was widely regarded as a political disaster in which the party's social conservatives managed to alienate swing voters with their exclusionary rhetoric. A new cultural war was launched, and not coincidentally, it was the Democratic ticket that managed to win the '92 election. Our fifth story on the Countdown, could it be '92 all over again?" (Transcript follows)

NewsBusters' Rich Noyes has reported on the Democratic affiliations of the USA Today reporter who "broke" the NSA phone records story.

Other journalists are worried about the loss of credibility to the profession in general if the story turns out to be false. Reports Editor and Publisher:

The USA Today phone records scoop, which is drawing increased scrutiny as phone companies dispute elements of the report, has also sparked interest among those in the news business, as well as longtime journalism observers.

Editors and veteran journalists who spoke with E&P are mixed on how the situation has been handled by all involved, with some claiming that the outcome could impact how news outlets report sensitive intelligence information in the future.

This weekend's captionfest features a picture of Joe Wilson, media dahling, with his supersecret paperpusher wife Valerie Plame, heading to the DC premier of Al Gore's environmentalist movie "An Inconvenient Truth."

Original Reuters caption, complete with false information on Plame's "agent" status: "Former diplomat Joe Wilson and his wife, former CIA agent Valerie Plame, attend the East Coast premiere of the movie 'An Inconvenient Truth' in Washington May 17, 2006. 'An Inconvenient Truth' tells the story of former U.S. Vice President Al Gore's commitment to expose the myths and misconceptions that surround global warming and inspire actions to prevent it. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts."

The New Media Journal, formerly The Rant.us, has been removed from Google News and Google Search for what has been deemed “hate speech.” Many readers here might be familiar with this conservative e-zine, and, as a disclaimer, I have been a contributing writer there since September 2004.

(Update: I was just informed by the proprietor of MichNews.com, another conservative e-zine, that he was terminated by Google about a month ago for the same reason. And, the Jawa Report was so terminated on March 29, 2005. In all cases, the offending articles appear to have dealt with radical Islam and terrorism.)

This morning, proprietor Frank Salvato realized that none of today’s content had appeared at Google News or was available through Google Search. As such, he sent an e-mail message to the help desk, and received the following response (permission granted to post):

From: Google Help [mailto:source-suggestions@google.com]

Sent: Friday, May 19, 2006 11:56 AM

To: NewMediaJournal.us

Subject: [#58423255] Google News

Hi Frank,

Thanks for writing. We received numerous reports about hate content on your site, and after

News story, or Gore 2008 press release? At first glance it was hard to tell, but . . . wait! Yup, there it is: (Reuters). So yes, this is cold, hard reporting of just-the-facts, ma'am. Then again, consider the opening paragraphs:

Al Gore brushes aside talk of another run for the U.S. presidency and wages a new campaign to protect the Earth that he says must be won.

The former Democratic vice president sounds the alarm as a citizen activist armed with his old slide show turned into a Hollywood movie about the threat of global warming.

A number of Canadian news websites are reporting that the Iranian parliament passed a law this week requiring non-Muslims in the country to wear certain insignia identifying them as such (hat tip to Drudge). As reported by Canada’s National Post: “Human rights groups are raising alarms over a new law passed by the Iranian parliament that would require the country's Jews and Christians to wear coloured badges to identify them and other religious minorities as non-Muslims.”

The article continued: “‘This is reminiscent of the Holocaust,’ said Rabbi Marvin Hier, the dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. ‘Iran is moving closer and closer to the ideology of the Nazis.’"

Apparently, this has been confirmed by Iranians now living in Canada: “Iranian expatriates living in Canada yesterday confirmed reports that the Iranian parliament, called the Islamic Majlis, passed a law this week setting a dress code for all Iranians, requiring them to wear almost identical ‘standard Islamic garments.’"

What are the facts:

On Thursday night, NBC aired the final episode of "Will & Grace" after eight seasons, but on Thursday’s "Today," MRC’s Geoff Dickens noticed Katie Couric interviewed the cast and just lathered on the praise that her 14-year-old daughter learned so much about tolerance for homosexuality from the show, and "I think that’s a great contribution to society," because "I think you have to teach tolerance at a very early age and the more comfortable people feel with people who are different, starting when they're young, the more tolerant and accepting they're gonna be as they go into adulthood." So much for CBS hiring an even-handed new anchor on the hot social issues of the day.

You would expect an NBC show to praise an NBC show, but Couric went way beyond that to a serious political lecture. She began the segment by touting the victory over what critics call homophobia: