So what if the markets tank? Pushing the "progressive" agenda is the paramount goal. That's the advice Cenk Uygur and his left-wing guest David Sirota have for President Obama. On a day when awful job growth numbers stirred fears of a double-dip recession, Uygur and Sirota still scolded Obama for suggesting that he had to be cautious in his public statements because of the possible impact on markets and the world at large.
Egged on by Uygur, Sirota said Obama should push his agenda "almost regardless" of the consequences.
View video after the jump.
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By Mark Finkelstein | June 3, 2011 | 8:47 PM EDT
By Matt Hadro | June 3, 2011 | 7:01 PM EDT
Both "scandals" of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) carried much more weight Thursday than on Friday, but ABC's Good Morning America continued hitting Christie Friday for his use of a state helicopter to attend his son's baseball game. However, the network's morning show dropped the Twitter scandal of Rep. Anthony Weiner from its newscast.
Although Gov. Christie wrote a personal check to the state Treasury Thursday to cover the travel expenses, ABC's focus on the story was largely negative and still centered on the scandal itself. Anchor George Stephanopoulos admitted that "he's used the helicopter a lot less than his predecessors, but in these times you just can't get away with it."
[Click here for audio. Video below the break.]
By Matt Hadro | June 3, 2011 | 6:29 PM EDT
In the Friday morning coverage of former Sen. John Edwards' indictment by a federal grand jury, only one of the three major networks, CBS, reported that he was a Democrat. Neither ABC nor NBC reported Edwards' party affiliation, simply calling him a "former presidential candidate."
ABC's Good Morning America sympathetically called the morning "a difficult one" for Edwards as he faced indictment. Both ABC and NBC did full segments on the scandal, and ABC's Good Morning America actually led the show with the story. CBS only briefly mentioned the story before moving on with other news.
By Kyle Drennen | June 3, 2011 | 5:36 PM EDT
As news broke of Dr. Jack's Kevorkian death on Friday, MSNBC anchor Chris Jansing invited on defense attorney and friend Geoffrey Fieger to praise the convicted criminal known as 'Dr. Death': "Dr. Jack Kevorkian will be looked at as a hero, a true hero, and as a martyr for what they did to him for nine years. Putting him in prison..." [Audio available here]
Jansing began the interview by wondering about Kevorkian's legacy: "Was he a dying patient's savior or a cold-blooded killer?" As soon as she introduced Fieger, he immediately argued: "I doubt very many people will ever remember him as a cold-blooded killer. Obviously there's some on the fringe, but I think most of us would recognize his, not only his greatness and his kindness and his beneficence and his importance."
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By Ken Shepherd | June 3, 2011 | 3:57 PM EDT
Imagine, if you will, that in 2003 Fox News brought on a disgraced Bush administration official who had been barred from Wall Street trading to talk up the president's economic policies. Imagine also that the anchor doing the interview failed to disclose that fact to viewers.
Well, that's pretty much what happened in the 2 p.m. Eastern hour of MSNBC coverage today, when anchor Thomas Roberts interviewed former Obama car czar Steven Rattner.
By Tim Graham | June 3, 2011 | 3:23 PM EDT
At the Daily Kos blog, the blogger known as SixDollarLiberal created a ruckus on Wednesday by titling an article “In Defense of Sharia.” You know the article was a bad idea when it began with the disclaimer “I was raised a Christian, and became an atheist/agnostic as an adult. I have a much better understanding of Christianity than of Islam. If I get anything wrong in this, please feel free to correct me in the comments section.”
S.D.L. doesn’t explicitly defend Sharia law, but suggests that hey, Islam has some extreme tenets that most moderate Muslims don’t follow, just like Christianity has some wild old practices as dictated by the Old Testament about stoning adulterers and so on. So S.D.L. thought let’s be fair and balanced: “We don't call out Christianity for being a very violent religion that calls upon the execution of women, children, and homosexuals; so let's not do it to Islam either.”
By Kyle Drennen | June 3, 2011 | 2:54 PM EDT
An otherwise straightforward report on bad economic news on Friday's NBC Today cited economist Diane Swonk, who argued government stimulus prevented things from getting worse: "We basically had a massive coronary during the financial crisis....Financial stimulus and monetary stimulus, you know, got us to the stage where we're healing but we're in still in a lot of rehab."
Correspondent Tom Costello set up the sound bite by declaring: "To get things moving, the government has already cut payroll taxes while the Fed has pumped in $600 billion of stimulus money." He lamented: "But more government spending is unlikely given the political battle over the debt ceiling in Washington."
By Lachlan Markay | June 3, 2011 | 2:49 PM EDT
Some time on Thursday, the New York Times scrubbed a very telling quote from its website. "In my house growing up," said the paper's new executive editor, Jill Abramson, "The Times substituted for religion. If The Times said it, it was the absolute truth."
Well isn't that nice. The paper's new head honcho was indoctrinated in Times-ology from childhood. When someone says they read the paper "religiously," we tend to think of it as a figure of speech. No so for Abramson. The paper was apparently her veritable scripture.
Does she still feel that way? Well, since being tapped for chief editor, Abramson said it was like "ascending to Valhalla."
By Alex Fitzsimmons | June 3, 2011 | 1:52 PM EDT
William F. Buckley Jr. once said his job was to "stand athwart history, yelling stop!" If more liberals took this advice, they wouldn't end up looking like two CNN anchors who just don't know when to say no to unsustainable deficit spending.
On the eve of a disappointing jobs report in which the unemployment rate rose to 9.1 percent, CNN International's Richard Quest plowed ahead like the helmsman of the Titanic in calling for "classic Keynesian economics" to salvage the foundering economy.
By Clay Waters | June 3, 2011 | 12:20 PM EDT
UPDATE: Some hours after the Times's initial filing, the phrase "former senator" in paragraph one was changed to read "former Democratic senator."
Where’s the party? New York Times reporter Katharine Seelye filed an online report early Friday on the breaking story of the indictment on campaign finance violations of John Edwards, the former senator and 2008 Democratic presidential candidate (and John Kerry’s 2004 running mate), on charges he violated campaign finance law to conceal an extramarital affair during his presidential campaign. Only one thing missing: His political party.
By Matthew Balan | June 3, 2011 | 11:57 AM EDT
On Friday's Early Show, before the new 9.1% unemployment figure came out, CBS's Dean Reynolds bewailed how President Obama is being "saddled" by the "stubbornly sluggish economy." Reynolds played up how "GM, Ford, and Chrysler have all returned to profitability," and tracked down a beneficiary of the auto industry bailout, who sang the praises of the Democrat.
[Audio clips from Reynolds's report available here; video available below the jump]
By NB Staff | June 3, 2011 | 11:03 AM EDT
Sarah Palin is "running against the press, mocking them," NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell argued on the June 2 edition of "Hannity," pointing to the media's consternation over the former Alaska governor's bus tour.
"She's having a field day running against them" and "knows exactly what she's doing," the Media Research Center founder added, pointing to polls showing Americans largely distrust liberal media outlets like the broadcast networks.
By Julia A. Seymour | June 3, 2011 | 10:32 AM EDT
CNBC panelists and guests always make predictions in the minutes leading up to the Labor Department's release of the jobs report and June 3 was no exception.
While economists Diane Swonk and Mark Zandi and CNBC's own Steve Liesman all made predictions of job gains between 100,000 and 150,000 - Rick Santelli threw his own lower prediction in just seconds before the announcement: 55,000. (Video available here)
By NB Staff | June 3, 2011 | 10:31 AM EDT
Happy Friday, NBers! Plenty of great material in today's all-new episiode of NewsBusted. Take a look below the break, and then subscribe to our YouTube channel (oh, and have you checked out MRC TV yet?). Enjoy!
By Noel Sheppard | June 3, 2011 | 9:54 AM EDT
CNN's Howard Kurtz took a cheap shot at former Alaska governor Sarah Palin Friday via his Twitter account.
Unfortunately, the joke's on him for his mocking of the former vice presidential candidate conveyed to his 73,000 followers his own total ignorance of insurance mandates: