Barack Obama

As NewsBusters previously reported, MSNBC's Touré Neblett on Thursday's The Cycle accused presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney of using what he called "niggerization" against Barack Obama.

On Friday, Neblett offered a twelve second - yes, I said twelve second! - apology for his disgraceful remark (video follows with transcript and commentary):

CNN is harping on the "partisan" connections of a group of military veterans criticizing President Obama, likening it to Swift Boat, yet it has helped further liberal partisan attacks in the past through its own biased coverage.

"A new group of veterans, including former Navy SEALs, accuses President Obama of taking too much credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden. The group says it's nonpartisan. But a CNN investigation finds it has close links to the Republican Party," reported Joe Johns on Thursday's The Situation Room.

It appears now that Paul Ryan has been named Mitt Romney's running mate, CBS Late Show host David Letterman feels obligated to attack him every evening.

On Thursday's program, Letterman spent two minutes on the Wisconsin Congressman including accusing him of being "the grandson of the Ripley’s Believe It or Not man who was able to swallow his own face" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

For a hot minute, it looked like Joe Biden might have lost Al Sharpton. And just as quickly, Sharpton returned to the fold.

Biden has another possible entry to Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, along with his open-mic boast to President Obama in 2010 that passage of Obamacare was "a big f***ing deal." (audio clip after page break)

For well over a week now, the folks on MSNBC have been throwing conniption fits over the selection of Paul Ryan as Mitt Romney's running mate.

On Thursday, Hardball host Chris Matthews actually said, "They’ve created a real Frankenstein’s monster in putting this guy on the ticket" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

MSNBC's Touré Neblett just can't resist tossing out the race card whenever possible.

On Thursday's The Cycle, Touré accused presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney of using what he called "niggerization" against Barack Obama (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Political reporter Stephanie Condon painted Republican vice presidential pick Paul Ryan as an "anti-abortion" extremist in a Wednesday report for CBSNews.com. Condon forwarded the talking points of the pro-abortion left as she zeroed in on Ryan's support of personhood legislation: "Supporters of reproductive rights have loudly pointed out that this type of legislation would not only outlaw abortion but potentially some forms of contraception or even in vitro fertilization."

The online correspondent hyped that "personhood initiatives are so extreme that even card-carrying conservatives like former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour have expressed concerns that they go too far." Condon repeatedly used variations of the "conservative" label in her article, but didn't once identify the left-wing politics of pro-abortion groups.

ABC News's Jake Tapper noticed an interesting trend with President Obama.  He hasn't been around to take any questions from the press lately.  In fact, he has evaded the national press corps  for more than two months.  However, as Tapper noted on his blog today, Obama did have time to talk to "reporters from People Magazine and Entertainment Tonight."  In addition, "during his three-day Iowa bus tour this week, for example, he conducted three interviews with local radio stations, including a sports talk radio show, and a roundtable discussion with columnists from three Iowa papers, in addition to sitting down with People and Entertainment Tonight. On July 12, he did an interview with Charlie Rose for CBS This Morning."

Obama's "last news conference was at the G20 in June, when he answered six questions from three reporters on the European debt crisis, the conflict in Syria, and the notion of politics stopping at the water’s edge. The White House press corps has not formally been given the opportunity to ask questions of the president on U.S. soil since his appearance in the Briefing Room on June 8 (when he said “the private sector is doing fine.)" 

Over at the opinion page of Investor's Business Daily, the editors noticed an all-too-common trend in American journalism: blaming Republicans for "negative" campaigns and not Democrats.

If you've ever wondered why you don't see Republicans punch as hard as Democrats in their rhetoric or in their advertising, this is why:

It’s kind of sad, really – a novelty pop band with a lone hit 30 years ago trying to make political hay of an incident of about the same vintage. But Devo doesn’t have much else to do these days, and the left will welcome any help in its efforts to slam presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

Famous for their 1980 hit single “Whip It,” Devo just revealed their plan to release an Anti-Romney song later this month to Rolling Stone.

It seems that even the CBS Late Show audience has a limit to how much Mitt Romney bashing it will take.

On Wednesday night, David Letterman was booed for depicting the presumptive Republican presidential nominee as a male model on The Price Is Right (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

Comedy Central's Jon Stewart asked NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams the $64 trillion question on Wednesday's Daily Show.

"What is preventing the media from discussing more substantive issues before the introduction of Paul Ryan, and then since the introduction, and then, let's say, you know, after the election?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Wednesday's CBS Evening News finally mentioned the controversial ad -- produced by an Obama super PAC -- which blames Mitt Romney for former steel worker Joe Soptic's wife dying of cancer, as CBS correspondent Nancy Cordes filed a report recounting negative campaigning from both the GOP and Democratic sides.

But she only vaguely referred to the pro-Obama super PAC, Priorities USA, as an "outside group," even though it was founded by former Obama advisors to support the President's reelection. Covering the same inflammatory ad for CBS This Morning on Friday, Cordes had made the group's partisan affiliation clear, describing them as "a top outside group supporting the President."

There were some stark contrasts on the campaign trail in Wednesday's New York Times. After Vice President Joe Biden warned a racially mixed south Virginia audience of the Republican ticket: "They're going to put y'all back in chains." A five-paragraph brief on Biden's comments by Rebecca Berg made page A14 Wednesday, including a brief quote of Mitt Romney's counterattack on the Obama camp in Chillicothe, Ohio, under the soporific headline "A Metaphor Draws Notice."

Berg helpfully corrected Biden's grammar by removing the veep's condescending second-person plural Southernism ("y'all"), replacing it with the more standard "you all." By contrast, the exchange was highlighted in a front-page Washington Post article, which retained Biden's contraction.

Jay Leno took some cheap shots at America's leading Republicans Tuesday.

During his Tonight Show monologue filled with jokes about the GOP's presumptive presidential nominee, Leno said, "Ever since it was announced that Sarah Palin will not be speaking at the Republican convention the Romney campaign has been flooded with thousands of texts and emails demanding she be allowed to speak - all from President Obama" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Late this this afternoon, the Associated Press made a correction to Christopher Rugaber's August 10 story on July's federal budget results. His original claim, noted on August 11 by yours truly at NewsBusters and at BizzyBlog, was that Barack Obama's promise to cut the deficit in half was something "he pledged to do during his 2008 campaign."

As noted in my original post and its mirror, the only evidence of a "cut in half" promise I could locate was in February 2009, a month after Obama took office and shortly after the passage of the stimulus package. A February 21, 2009 AP story reported that such a promise was coming, and it became official two days later. After the jump, readers will find the text of the AP's correction language (also found here, and currently listed at the top of its corrections link at its national site) followed by a few paragraphs from the original item up to where the correction has been incorporated:

Rep. Paul Ryan's 100 percent rating by the pro-life National Right to Life Committee and his support of the "Protect Life Act" are evidence of the Wisconsin Republican's extremism on abortion and as such, should hurt the appeal of the Romney/Ryan ticket with women voters, MSNBC's Alex Wagner argued on the August 14 edition of her noon Eastern Now with Alex Wagner program.

Of course the 100 percent pro-choice record that Barack Obama has with NARAL Pro-Choice America might strike centrist voters as equally "extreme," but Wagner failed to note Obama has never deviated from the NARAL line. What's more, as a state senator, Barack Obama voted AGAINST an Illinois state version of the "Born-Alive Act" which was designed to punish abortionists who kill babies who were born before the abortion procedure was finished in utero. Nothing says pro-abortion extremist like voting against a bill to penalize infanticide, especially considering that a federal version of the bill passed the U.S. Congress in 2002 without any votes in the negative. [MP3 audio here; video follows page break]

ABC’s Martha Raddatz is perhaps the freshest face of the Old Media veterans chosen as a moderator by the Commission on the Presidential Debates. After five years at National Public Radio, Raddatz has handled a variety of serious Washington beats for ABC since 1999. She's married to journalist Tom Gjelten, who's worked for NPR for 30 years. Raddatz has also been married to Obama's FCC chairman Julius Genachowski and journalist Ben Bradlee III, son of the former Washington Post executive editor.

Is Raddatz objective? The Commission could have considered Raddatz fawning all over Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as “cool” and “trending” on May 9, 2012:

Howard Kurtz considers himself to be a "media analyst."

So what's the deal with his highly-opinionated hit-piece published at the Daily Beast Tuesday with the highly-inflammatory title "Is Paul Ryan a Ticking Time Bomb as Mitt Romney’s Running Mate?"

Instead of fact-checking President Obama's dishonest attack on Paul Ryan for blocking a farm bill, CNN simply reported it three times on Tuesday morning. Correspondent Brianna Keilar actually repeated the false attack in her own words.

"[T]hey [the House] failed to pass a bill for drought relief, which as you know is huge right now because of all of the farmers, all of the cattle ranchers who are suffering through this terrible drought in the Midwest," Keilar said, ignoring that the House did pass a different drought relief bill and Ryan voted for it. [Video below the break.]

Less than twelve hours after getting caught reading from a liberal blog during a heated debate with a Romney adviser, CNN's Soledad O'Brien was back on the air Tuesday echoing Democrat talking points.

In fact, things got so hot with former New Hampshire Governor John Sununu (R) on CNN's Starting Point that he ended up saying, "Put an Obama bumper sticker on your forehead when you do this" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Now that Mitt Romney has named Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan as his running-mate on the Republican ticket, dishonest liberals are dusting off their old standby of "Mediscare," making false accusations that conservatives want to completely dismantle Medicare and Social Security simply because they wish to make some changes in order to preserve them. Democrats, it is implied, would never dare to change such programs.

Unfortunately for this argument, there is one prominent liberal Democrat who has not only reduced Medicare spending growth, he's even touted his willingness to do the same to Social Security.

All three broadcast network evening newscasts recounted President Obama's charge that Rep. Paul Ryan is holding up a farm aid bill as the President campaign in Iowa, but only CBS's Nancy Cordes took the time to forward to viewers the Romney campaign's rebuttal that "Ryan voted in favor of a drought relief package that's currently languishing in the Senate."

On ABC's World News, correspondent David Muir set up Obama's complaint:

Piers Morgan on Monday picked the wrong guy to toss Democrat talking points at.

After the CNN anchor spoke the typical liberal nonsense about Paul Ryan's budget only benefiting rich people, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich scolded, "I do wonder sometimes if you guys all get off in a little club and learn a brand new mantra and then all repeat it mindlessly...You guys almost sound like you're an extension of the Obama campaign" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Can CNN's Soledad O'Brien make her sources any more apparent than she did Monday night?

While filling in for Anderson Cooper, O'Brien was actually caught on screen looking at an article from the left-wing website Talking Points Memo to assist her in a heated debate with Romney campaign senior adviser Barbara Comstock (video follows with commentary):