Catherine Maggio's blog

Gay “rights” and same-sex marriage have been all over the news lately. Sick of the issue? Why not tune to ESPN for the baseball scores and an update on the football lockout? But there, instead of “Web Gems” is … gay marriage.

ESPN is supposed to be in the business of sports, but lately the network has allowed social advocacy to creep into its programming, and the Disney-owned sports network’s take turns out to be identical to the pro-gay mainstream media.

It is not often that the women on “The View” are silenced by their own guest, but Michelle Malkin did exactly that when she appeared on the show August 2. Malkin’s new book, “Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Kronies” was bound to be attacked by the left-left leaning panel of “The View,” but Malkin did not give them an opportunity.

Malkin dominated the conversation from the beginning with facts and examples. When asked by Elisabeth Hasselbeck about the corruption her book uncovers, she had several examples. “I scoured from top to bottom,” and started to list some of the more known corruption scandals within the Obama administration, until Joy Behar interrupted and asked, “And there was nothing like that in the Bush administration?”

Hats off to “Today.” Oh wait, maybe that should be “Tops off.” On August 3, the morning show promoted the book “Uncovered,” by Jordan Matter, despite what the book covered, or rather, what the book did not cover.

The book is a collection of photographs of, as Meredith Vieira explained, “average women willing to bare it all for the sake of equality.” And NBC had no qualms about devoting a more than five minute segment to promoting Matter’s “art.”

 It began when “photographer Jordan Matter set out to see how his fellow New Yorkers would handle a little breast.”

“There was this whole taboo issue around women’s bodies,” Matter explained, “and the most public way to address that issue would be to photograph it publicly.”

The mainstream media dropped the ball in the past when it came to Gardasil, and they haven’t improved with time. The “Today” Show featured Dr. Nancy Snyderman, NBC’s chief medical editor and a longtime advocate for the vaccine, and Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz, somewhat of a skeptic. But the report was by no means balanced.
 
Dr. Snyderman began promoting the vaccine right out of the gate, saying:

We know how the media relished the fall of the GOP, and lovingly analyzed divisions within the party. But their beloved Democrats are falling apart before their eyes, and the strain is beginning to tell. The Blue Dog Democrats are for being the only thing between this nation and socialized medicine, a fact that has some liberals coming out swinging – literally, in at least one case.

“Social commentator” Nancy Giles appeared on the “Today Show” July 28 along with Dan Abrams and Willie Geist during Kathy Lee Gifford and Hota Kotb’s segment “News Flash.” The usually all small-talk segment got heated when it turned to health care.

Kotb posed the simple question “Do you guys think health care will pass…?” Abrams and Willie gave simple answers. Giles, however, got passionate.

“It better and I could punch every Blue Dog Democrat in the nose. And I’m a Democrat. I could punch them, I’m so annoyed. And I’m annoyed with Harry Reid. I better not find him in an elevator.”

As the DOW hit 9000 for the first time since January, NBC’s “Today” refused to give up its crusade against big banks. Dylan Ratigan of MSNBC appeared on July 24 to offer his opinion on what caused the economic crisis and what needs to be done in order to prevent another.

Not surprisingly, his answer to one of these questions was government regulation. And here’s a shocker, it was not the answer to the first. Ratigan came out swinging against the bank’s greed that supposedly brought the American economy into “total collapse, essentially” as host Meredith Vieira worded it.

The banks are profiting once again and Meredith Vieira is livid about it. During her July 21 interview with President Obama, Vieira questioned Obama about the banks having the audacity to do what taxpayers bailed them out to do: profit.
 
“You know I wanted to ask you about Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan reporting these big profits in the second quarter,” Vieira told Obama as they walked through the White House. “And they're talking about bonuses for their employees. People hear that, taxpayers, and they're very frustrated.”

One has to wonder though if it is the taxpayer’s frustration she was expressing, or rather the frustration of the hosts of “Today,” since this anger at banks has become a common theme on the show.
 

The Washington Post reported July 20 that, “Scientists say the chemicals that helped solve the last global environmental crisis – the hole in the ozone layer – are making the current one worse.”

David A. Fahrenthold wrote, “This is not the funny kind of irony.” Except it really is. Even funnier is the Post’s dedication to the environmental cause, a cause that does not have as much support as the media makes it out, and a cause that keeps shooting itself in the foot.

The chemicals used to replace chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) have now been found to “act as heat sponges in Earth's atmosphere, absorbing energy from the sun and keeping it from being reflected out into space,” and therefore contribute to the global warming “crisis.”

“Now, scientists say, the world must find replacements for the replacements – or these super-emissions could cancel out other efforts to stop global warming,” Fahrenthold wrote. Such are the problems when you view everything as a series of crises. Fahrenthold accepts the current climate situation as a “crisis” and joins with the sources he cites to bemoan their betrayal by those replacement chemicals once believed brought salvation.

A 72-year-old woman wants a baby and plans to have one via in vitro fertilization. The women on “The View” have conflicting feelings about it.

“72-year-old Jenny Brown has spent almost $50,000 on in vitro fertilization because she is determined to have a baby, saying her age doesn't matter because a mom can die at any age and she's fully prepared for the hard work of motherhood,” Whoopi Goldberg explained on July 15, the same day the Associated Press reported the World’s oldest mom died and left behind two-year-old twins.

With the start of Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s Supreme Court nomination confirmation hearings the topic of abortion naturally arises – not only because it one of our most polarizing legal and social issues, but also because Sotamayor claims to be Catholic, a religion that adamantly and explicitly teaches the evil of abortion.

And while her Catholicism scares some liberals, others are using it as a selling point, and in doing so desecrating a holy image of the Virgin Mary. Felix Sanchez, the CEO of D.C. government and public relations firm TerraCom and chairman of the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts, has updated his Twitter page with a background of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Over Our Lady’s face, the likeness of Sotomayor has been superimposed (shown at right).

The patron saint of all the Americas, Our Lady of Guadalupe has a special place in the hearts of Hispanic Catholics, especially Mexicans (which Sotomayor is not).  But Sanchez seemed to use the image to appeal to all Hispanics and to promote his plea to “Confirm  Sonia Maria Sotomayor,” as his Twitter page says.

Last year, banks were “too big to fail” and were arm twisted into taking a federal bailout.  Now that many of them have repaid the TARP money, the media deems their profits to be a betrayal of the taxpayers.

NBC “Today” host Meredith Vieira began the segment on Goldman Sachs by pitting the average American against the big companies, “While you may be struggling financially these days, happy days appear to be here again for some companies on wall street, and now they are getting set to pay out some big bonuses.”

Correspondent Melissa Francis also continued this storyline in her report. “With the nation’s unemployment rate moving closer to ten percent, a housing market still plagued by foreclosures and households struggling to make ends meet, it might be hard for most Americans to believe that it’s back to business as usual on Wall Street,” she said.

It’s like clockwork. Gas prices have fallen, and so has network news coverage of them. This direct correlation between prices and coverage has caused news of gas prices to essentially disappear in the past week.

The latest Lundberg Survey of fuel prices, released on July 12, showed that gas prices have fallen more than 10 cents over the past two weeks. However, in keeping with the warped coverage of gas prices, the largest drop in prices since December went unreported by all major network morning shows except NBC’s “Today Show”, and even this was hidden away in the hourly news reports.

Perhaps Americans have lost interest in gas prices, and therefore networks now fail to find the topic newsworthy. If that’s the case, the public must have changed its mind since mid-June when, with prices on the rise, coverage was extensive.

The “Cash For Clunkers” bill that became law on June 24, “has a lot of squeaks and rattles” according to Business Week, but the main stream media has ignored these and instead praised and promoted it.

The law was meant to promote smaller, more fuel efficient cars by subsidizing dealers to buy back gas guzzlers so that drivers could buy environmentally friendly cars. It fails in practice, according to the July 13 & 20, 2009 issue of the magazine, and may even do the exact opposite of its purpose.

“The problem with the law is that it is both underfunded and too narrow to generate a spike in showroom traffic,” David Welch wrote in the July 13&20 edition of Business Week, “Plus, the law makes little sense for most passenger-car owners.”

That’s not how ABC’s “World News Sunday” portrayed the idea on June 14, before the bill even passed. The network compared it to a similar law in Texas, one that according to David Muir “has been a smashing success.”

“Advocates say it will clean up the environment and help the struggling auto industry,” Ryan Owens reported as he interviewed proponents of the plan. He didn’t interview anyone opposed to the bill.

On ABCnews.com’s blog Political Punch, Yunji de Nies reported on the first celebration of gay pride month held in the White House by President Obama.

“President Obama told the group he is committed to equality for their community,” she reported, continuing on to quote Obama himself: “‘This struggle continues today, for even as we face extraordinary challenges as a nation, we cannot and will not put aside issues of basic equality,’ he said, ‘We seek an America in which no one feels the pain of discrimination based on who you are or who you love.’”

De Nies noted the gay community’s disappointment in a president they had hoped would actively promote their agenda: “Many gay and lesbians believe the President has been slow to act on major issues like the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, and the Defense of Marriage Act,” she wrote, neglecting to report on Obama’s personal belief that marriage should be between a man and a woman, or his administration’s recent defense of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

An article on advocate.com also neglected to admit Obama’s personal belief, but did quote Richard Socarides, a former LGBT advisor to President Bill Clinton, as saying, “No one ever questioned whether President Obama's heart was in the right place, but now we have the beginning of some action …”

Time magazine’s Michael Grunwald attempted in an article on Time’s Web site to make connections between two of the most prominent issues facing America and congress today, healthcare and energy. But he put forward a flawed argument that lacked balance and fell into the doomsday language so common in the main stream media.

“Everyone knows we use too much energy,” lamented Grunwald, “Our addiction to fossil fuels is torching the planet, empowering hostile petro-states and straining our wallets.” 

To justify his crisis language, Grunwald cited studies by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory which “suggest that more than half of our energy is lost through inefficiencies, calculations that don't even include the energy we fritter away through wasteful behavior like leaving lights on or idling cars.” He failed, however, to mention that Livermore is not an unbiased source. According to its Web site, “More than 40 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers were key scientific contributors to the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which, along with former Vice President Al Gore, won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.”

Sex, pregnancy, birth control, more sex.  original series, “The Secret Life of the American Teenager,” an original series on ABC Family (really) does not try to hide the fact that these topics are the focus of the show. And “Good Morning America” didn’t try to hide the fact that they think its great.

The female stars of ”Secret Life,” Shailene Woodley, India Eisley, Francia Raisa, and Megan Park appeared on Good Morning America on June 29. Weatherman Sam Champion asked the girls if they ever got uncomfortable with the issues they covered, while implying that their characters act as role models. “You guys take all the tough topics” he said. “We started out with the teen pregnancy thing, so right off the bat we got that one down. Is it ever uncomfortable for you? Because you're young women and you’ve got to give, you know, kind of the great advice to teens today. Ever uncomfortable?”

As if the ABC filibuster for ObamaCare wasn’t enough. The network, at it again, plugged Obama’s universal health insurance on “The View” with a huge assist from the editor of Fortune magazine.

The June 26 episode of program was a special, “Bank on The View: How to get a Job,” and was supposed to highlight what industries were hiring and offer tips to successfully find a job. Yet Joy Behar unabashedly used the show to promote Obama’s overhaul of the healthcare industry, even when it wasn’t the topic.

Andy Serwer, the editor of Fortune magazine, was in the midst of a discussion about the jobs available in the health care industry when Behar interrupted him and pointedly asked, “If Obama can push a healthcare, single-pay or whatever he’s trying to do, through, will that alleviate the problem, do you think?”

What problem Behar is referring to is unclear, since Serwer was speaking of the jobs available. But to Behar it was the perfect time to slide in support for Obama’s plan, even though she is not even sure what it entails.

Just last year the government claimed bailouts of major banks like CitiGroup were necessary to prevent economic collapse. But now that banks are turning a profit NBC is returning to attacks on pay.

A June 24 segment of “Today” attacked CitiGroup’s “internal discussions” to raise salaries (by 50 percent in some cases) and other major banks with footage from the 1987 movie “Wall Street,” AIG protest footage and an unemployed Michigan woman.

Meredith Vieira began by stoking class envy saying the story “might make some people hot under the collar.” Citigroup “wants to move away from paying big bonuses by instead giving nearly 300,000 workers large pay increases and it is not alone,” Vieira said.

When you consider that the entire reason anyone knows Jon and Kate Gosselin is that their reality show is about their life with eight young children, you would assume that, when the couple announced they were divorcing, the media would spare some attention for the effect on those children.

However, following the public announcement from the stars of “Jon & Kate Plus Eight,” that they were splitting, the June 23 “Today Show” wasn’t much concerned about the well-being of the Gosselin kids. NBC preferred to focus on the Jon and Kate themselves and the ratings of the show. The report didn’t mention the what the divorce (and the continuation of the show) would mean for the children.  

How many uninsured Americans are there really? It’s a number that the mainstream media have repeatedly misrepresented to make the health care “crisis” seem worse than it is. 
Business & Media Institute’s Julia A. Seymour hammered this point in an apprearance on Fox Business. Seymour exposed the common error by breaking down the actual number to more than 30 million less than the media claim it is. 
Journalists  have used the statistic of 46 million-47 million uninsured Americans, but as Seymour told Fox Business, this number was wildy  inflated. “The Census Bureau comes up with this number and they said that the number of uninsured is really 45.6 million people. But that's total people, and that includes almost 10 million who are non-citizens,” Seymour clarified. 

“Through good times and through bad, through sickness and through health, till death do us part” means less and less in society today. “The Today Show” did a little bit more to undercut matrimony – this time doing it for the children.

In a June 16 interview, psychotherapist Robi Ludwig reached the conclusion that divorce is sometimes a good thing for kids, ignoring the ramifications of this decision.

“…In some cases it's cultural, in some cases it's religious, where it's ingrained in us that if you're married you should stay married no matter what. And I think now studies are saying hey, maybe that's not the case,” Ludwig explained to Al Roker. She also explained: “The studies show that when parents stay together for the kids, and they have a high conflict-marriage, and there's a lot of argument, and they're attacking one another, the child feels very stressed out, and maybe they feel also that their needs are not being met, so what happens is, they're more inclined to engage in dysfunctional behaviors.”

NBC host Matt Lauer interviewed Sarah Palin on June 12, and defended comedian David Letterman and his joke about the statutory rape of Palin’s daughter by baseball player Alex Rodriguez.
 
When Palin began to condemn the joke as wildly inappropriate and offensive, Lauer defended Letterman: “Since David Letterman’s not here, let me just say that he did not mention Willow by name, and he then went on to say he was not referring to your 14-year-old daughter,” as though to Lauer the excuse diminished the vile nature of Letterman’s joke.

 At the end of the segment, Lauer did admit that, “a lot of people feel the joke was in extremely bad taste, no matter which daughter of yours he was referring to,”  but not before Palin pointed out that, “regardless, it was a degrading comment about a young woman,” and no joke of that nature should be tolerated, no matter how old the victim of the joke is.
 

It is not often that most of the women on “The View” agree on a controversial subject, but when Sherri Shepherd declared. “A man does not have a vagina,” nobody contradicted her.
 
That fact shouldn’t be in dispute, but in the case of Thomas Beatie, it is. Beatie, a woman who had a sex change to become a “man,” kept her female reproductive parts and has been labeled, incorrectly, by most of the media as the first “pregnant man.”  

But Shepherd correctly pointed out the obvious: “The baby came out of a vagina. A woman has a vagina,” and called Beatie “legally a man, but is a woman who had a baby.” And while Barbara Walters was hesitant to completely agree that Beatie is a woman, she did not contradict the statement either.
 

President Obama is making his big health insurance push and The Washington Post is right there beside him, helping make his “ambitious” case. The June 9 Post detailed the “inequities, shortcomings, waste and even dangers in the hodgepodge of uncoordinated medical services that consume nearly one-fifth of the nation’s economy.”

The Ceci Connolly article argued everyone agrees the health-care system must be changed. “On that point there is rare unanimity among Washington decision makers: The U.S. health system needs a major overhaul,” she wrote. 

Connolly certainly made it seem that way, including only two conservative voices who also argued for sweeping changes to our health insurance system. One of those two, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), was originally nominated Obama’s Commerce Secretary.

There were other problems with Connolly’s story, including some of the other facts she used in her article, such as the number of Americans in need of health insurance.  “Today, about 46 million Americans have no health insurance, so they go without or wait in emergency rooms for expensive, belated care,” she wrote, mischaracterizing the actual total by 10 million people or more.

The Hippocratic Oath means nothing to medical student Rozalyn Farmer Love. Not only did her June 7th op-ed in The Washington Post demonstrate the left’s logically and morally flawed argument in favor of abortion, but it also raises concerns about those who are entering the medical field and the morals they feel free to ignore.
 
Love, who plans to become an obstetrician-gynecologist dreams “of delivering healthy babies, working with families and supporting midwifery,” but was writing in an attempt to justify her own support for abortion, even while she asserted that “When I advocate for reproductive rights, for choice, I don't claim that abortion is morally acceptable.”
 

In a time when fiscal responsibility from politicians seems to be a thing of the past, NBC’s “Today Show”  and ABC’s “World News with Charles Gibson” criticized California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for his proposed budget cuts in his effort to save California from reaching total financial ruin.

The June 3rd “Today Show” featured numerous opponents of Schwarzenegger’s budget cuts, but nobody supporting or defending them.

The segment began with a clip of the governor stating: “Our wallet is empty. Our bank is closed, and our credit is dried up,” a fact that does not seem to bother NBC, as they mourn the proposed solution to this problem: the cutting of what they deemed “essential services.”