NewsBusters Archive

Jury selection in the second-degree murder trial of George Zimmerman began today and there’s no doubt that some people cannot wait for a circus to begin for both political and ratings reasons.

While much attention has been paid to the role of long-time race-baiter Al Sharpton and his employer MSNBC in trying to inflame people, another leader in trying to get justice to miscarry is the cable channel Black Entertainment Television which since Barack Obama emerged as a candidate for president in 2007 has made occasional forays into news coverage. On Friday of last week, the network aired a 30-minute special called “Justice for Trayvon: Our Son Is Your Son” trying to hype up the trial.

In Monday’s New York Times, reporter Amy Chozick explored how the James Rosen leak probe has turned the media debate upside down, with "Conservatives as Defenders of the Media."

“The press -- often the target of allegations of liberal bias by conservative media -- has found an unlikely ally in right-leaning radio and television hosts who have taken to defending the First Amendment with a fire-and-brimstone zeal,” she wrote.

Things got feisty on Morning Joe today, as Glenn Greenwald of the Guardian clashed with Mika Brzezinski over the leak of the NSA phone surveillance program by Greenwald's informant, Edward Snowden. H/t NB reader Jeff M.

When Brzezinski alleged that wiretapping or the review by the NSA of emails required an additional judicial review and warrant, Greenwald accused Mika of using "White House talking points" that were "completely misleading and false."  Mika denied it. Greenwald upped the animosity by telling Mika she would have known better if she had paid even "remote attention" to the issues over the last ten years. View the video after the jump.

Sometime late Thursday afternoon, an editorial at the New York Times bitterly criticizing President Obama for the expansion of surveillance efforts during his administration contained this sentence: "The administration has lost all credibility." Within a few hours, as seen here, that sentence was changed to "The administration has lost all credibility on this issue," and set off in a separate paragraph.

The Times is pretending that it didn't do what it obviously did:

All the revelations about the government's anti-terrorism surveillance has the Daily Kosmonauts in a nasty funk. "One Pissed Off Liberal" has fallen off the Hope and Change Wagon. In the midst of rambling about "our gang-rape of the world," OPOL wrote a little manifesto about "Living In Plastic Land."

The Left wanted to believe this was just some kind of Bush dictatorship that would fade away, but now OPOL has decided that America is a land "chock full of crazy a--holes, greedy short-sighted troglodytes with no sense of history." The hippies have lost heart when everyone looks like a Dubya: 

George Will had some harsh words for the Obama administration Sunday.

Appearing on ABC’s This Week, Will said that the recent revelation concerning National Security Agency information gathering is going to metastasize the IRS controversy into a national security scandal, and concluded that as a result, “the willingness to trust the executive branch is today minimal and should be.”

As NewsBusters has been reporting, liberal media members have been absolutely apoplectic over the thought of the Koch brothers buying the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times.

CNN's Howard Kurtz gave a somewhat more reasoned view of such an eventuality on Reliable Sources Sunday saying, "Let's remember that more liberal businessmen such as Warren Buffett have been snapping up newspapers without compromising their journalistic mission" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, on Sunday had harsh words for the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald revealing last week that the National Security Agency is looking at phone records of virtually all Americans.

Appearing on ABC’s This Week, Rogers said, “I know your reporter that you interviewed, Greenwald, says that he’s got it all and now is an expert on the program. He doesn't have a clue how this thing works” (video follows with transcript):

Texas Congressman Steve Stockman (R) weighed in on the recent revelations involving the National Security Agency looking at Americans' phone records with a humorous knock at Chris Matthews' so-called "news network."

Commenting on Twitter, Stockman wrote Saturday, "At this point the only way to prevent people from hearing your conversations is to have them on MSNBC":