Campaigns & Elections

During a 20-minute interview with President Obama aired on Thursday's NBC Rock Center, host Brian Williams devoted a total of 1 minute 36 seconds to the subject of the terrorist attack in Libya. At the same time, four segments of soft coverage of the President's re-election campaign received a combined total of 2 minutes 19 seconds.

The promotional fluff included the President stopping by a pizza shop in Iowa (1 min 3 sec), appearing on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno (30 sec), having singer Katy Perry perform at a rally in Las Vegas (31 sec), and him picking up some donuts at a Krispy Kreme in Tampa (15 sec). 

National Geographic Channel’s decision to air SEAL Team Six two days before the election, along with Harvey Weinstein’s insistence Barack Obama be more prominently featured, is raising reasonable concerns. We don’t want to pass judgement on the content, because we haven’t watched the film. But timing is what matters.

If the National Geographic Channel puts off airing this documentary by just three days, and there’s absolutely no reason why they can’t, it shows they have no agenda. If they don’t postpone it by just 72 hours, it will clearly show that they do. We want to believe that they don’t have an agenda. We’re asking the National Geographic Channel to delay the airing of this documentary until after Election Day. [For the full press release, click here.]

While President Obama's record-breaking pace to raising a total of $1 billion earlier this month received significant media attention, there was little if any curiosity among the traditional press about how he was on track to achieve such an unprecedented milestone in presidential fundraising. The broadcast networks in particular have not bothered to mention the growing scandal that is being scrupulously pieced together by alternative media outlets.

An independently-owned website Obama.com (redirects to official site here) has been suspected of accepting millions of dollars worth of illegal foreign donations for months now. Despite all the speculation and accusations coming from a nonprofit organization known as the Government Accountability Institute (GAI), no action had been taken until recently.

CBS This Morning brought on liberal Colin Powell on Thursday so he could break his endorsement of President Obama and boost the Democratic candidate that he supported in 2008. Norah O'Donnell spotlighted Powell's service with "several Republican presidents" and wondered if he was "still Republican." When the former secretary of state claimed that he's a "Republican of a more moderate mold," Rose pressed him if he "may have to leave the Republican Party, if it continues in the direction that it's going."

Despite noting Powell's past service as secretary of state and national security advisor, and asking for his "concerns...about Governor [Mitt] Romney's foreign policy," neither Rose nor O'Donnell once mentioned the ongoing issue of the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. They decided instead to joke with their guest about his love of the viral musical track, "Call Me Maybe."

Reporting on the Massachusetts Senate race on Thursday, CNN's Brooke Baldwin played a Democratic card by noting the amount of Wall Street money Republican incumbent Scott Brown's campaign receives compared with his Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren, who has campaigned as a populist opponent of Wall Street.  

"The Center for Responsive Politics was reporting nearly 9 out of every 10 Wall Street dollars spent in the Massachusetts campaign here going to Brown. How is that playing, how will that play with voters there?" Baldwin asked her guest, after noting the "huge sea change" causing Warren's lead in the polls. She didn't ask about any of Brown's attacks on Warren, however. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

A shrieking Chris Matthews on Thursday smeared the Republican Party, comparing the abortion stances of candidates such as Paul Ryan and Richard Mourdock to those found under Sharia law. The hyperbolic Hardball anchor snarled, "I don't like to comparing anything to Sharia, but there's something about this theocratic notion that we're going to apply all our philosophical beliefs, our metaphysics, our religious training and turn it into law and turn it into criminalization."  [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Matthews continued, "And it's not quite like stoning, but it has that same sort of impulse which is we're going to punish women." Terry O'Neil, the president of the National Organization for Women appeared on the show and screeched, "I think that it's kind of the creeping Talibanization of American policy." Speaking of Mitt Romney, she insisted that the Republican is in the "thick of this very fringe but very dangerous line of thought."

During the October 24 broadcast of the PBS Newshour, Gwen Ifill explored the state of current U.S. Senate races with Rothenberg Political Report’s Nathan Gonzales and Roll Call’s Shira Toeplitz.

The first on the list was Indiana race between Richard Mourdock and Rep. Joe Donnelly.  Here, liberal media creep leeched into Toeplitz’s analysis as she found Mourdock’s comments about life and conception frivolously similar to what she called Todd Akin's “horrific gaffe” on the matter several weeks ago.

It appears as though MSNBC has gone into overdrive covering up for the Obama administration over the terrorist attack on our consulate in Libya.  Following emails uncovered by CBS News late Tuesday evening showing the White House knew within two hours that the attack was terrorist related, MSNBC has run a grand total of two stories on these shocking developments. 

Unlike yesterday, NBC's Today did provide a news brief on the emails Thursday morning as well as a story during Wednesday night’s Nightly News, but their sister cable network MSNBC has only covered the story once today, on The Daily Rundown at 9:00 a.m. Eastern.

Charlie Rose and Norah O'Donnell badgered former RNC head Haley Barbour on Thursday's CBS This Morning on Indiana Republican Richard Mourdock's strongly pro-life stance, that even children conceived in rape are "God intended." Rose strongly hinted that the media firestorm surrounding Mourdock could affect the presidential race: "Romney may be gaining support among women. And the question arises, could this Mourdock controversy impact that?" [audio available here; video below the jump]

The CBS morning newscast stood out among its Big Three peers in significantly adding to the more than seven and half minutes of coverage from the previous day. The network devoted three minutes, 6 seconds to Mourdock, which is nearly three times the one minutes and 7 seconds that ABC's Good Morning America and NBC's Today set aside to the story combined.

This morning the Washington Post website announced that the paper had decided to endorse President Barack Obama for reelection. That endorsement should hit the print edition tomorrow. But make no mistake, endorsing the president is not the only cover the paper is granting the president. Witness the Post's treatment of the latest, damning development in the Benghazi fiasco.

Post editors buried a news story on the Benghazi State Department emails on page A9, assigning it a rather boring headline -- "E-mails show State named militant group on night of Libya attack" -- and a staff writer, Anne Gearan, who previously wrote a piece consumed with concern about Hillary Clinton's tarnished legacy post-Benghazi. By contrast, Post editors placed on the front page a 74-paragraph profile of Obama's counterterrorism advisor John Brennan, headlined "Brennan reshaped anti-terror strategy: CIA veteran emerges at core of effort to cement process for lethal action."

Continuing to hype Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock's opposition to abortion as some kind of scandal for Mitt Romney, on Wednesday's NBC Nightly News, correspondent Peter Alexander proclaimed: "...the Romney campaign is also dealing with a new controversy, trying to distance itself from this comment..."

After playing a sound bite of Mourdock explaining in a Tuesday senatorial debate that he believed an unborn child conceived by rape was still a life "intended by God," Alexander touted an ad of Romney endorsing the Indiana Republican. He then observed how, "Mr. Romney, who's been carefully courting women voters, ignored the controversy" and declared that the Governor's campaign has "been trying to steer away from it's party's right-wing since the contentious primaries..."

[Update, Friday, 10:44 am Eastern: Ted Turner released an apology on Thursday. (via Yahoo! News)]

On the October 19 edition of Piers Morgan Tonight, Ted Turner said it was "good" that more American soldiers are dying from suicide than in combat.

"I think it's good, because it's so clear that we're programmed and we're born to love and help each other, not to kill each other, to destroy each other," Turner said. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

A Democratic Senate candidate insulted CNN's Candy Crowley by joking to a male debate moderator "You're prettier than her," but CNN still hasn't covered that after a week. The network quickly jumped all over GOP Senate candidate Richard Mourdock for his comments on rape and abortion, however.

After Democrats pounced on Mourdock for saying pregnancies, even in cases of rape, are "something that God intended to happen," CNN hammered the story all day Wednesday. Anchor Ashleigh Banfield spent over 20 minutes – one-third of her news hour – on Mourdock's comments and his press conference.

Every other network has produced at least one major story. While not enough, in some cases, it’s something. From ABC, it’s nothing.

ABC is aiding and abetting the Obama administration’s cover-up of their deceitful response to the Benghazi terrorist attack. There is no bigger story than Obama’s Benghazi lie, and ABC, a so-called news network, has absolutely no excuse for hiding the truth from the American people.

In her rush to condemn U.S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock, liberal theologian Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite -- no stranger to criticism here on NewsBusters -- took the Indiana Republican's recent comments on abortion out of context and subsequently offered up readers a theology which, if followed to its logical conclusion, demeans the humanity and God-given dignity of persons living today who were conceived because of rape.

Here's how the Center for American Progress senior fellow began her October 24 "On Faith" column at WashingtonPost.com:

In an interview with President Obama on Wednesday, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams lobbed this softball: "How is it that with – what, 13 days to go, you're fighting for your life in a 47/47 race?... So after the excitement of '08, given the power of incumbency, you got Bin Laden, you did not expect to be sitting on a more substantial race than we are as we sit here today?" [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Obama argued he was exceeding media expectations: "...we always knew this was gonna be a close race from the start....you guys have some short memories. Folks in your business were writing me off a year ago, saying there's no way I would win."

The Associated Press, Bloomberg and Reuters all eagerly told readers today that the seasonally adjusted annualized level of single-family home sales in September of 389,000 was the highest in 2-1/2 years and really, really good news for the housing market, the economy as a whole, or both. What they all "somehow" failed to mention was the fact that sales are still far below where they were during the 12-month recession in 2008 and 2009 (defining "recession" properly), when the market was screeching to a halt after overbuilding driven by subprime lending frauds by design Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The numbers reported by the Census Bureau since January of 2008, first expressed at seasonally adjusted annual rates, then as raw number of homes sold, follow the jump.

The Media Research Center's Brent Bozell told CNN on Wednesday that the upcoming National Geographic drama "SEAL Team Six," produced by Obama-supporter Harvey Weinstein and set to air two days before Election Day, should not be released until after the election is over.

"If it doesn't have a political agenda, as they say it doesn't, and if there aren't any political purposes behind this, as they say there aren't, then simply put it off by two days," Bozell told CNN. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Liberal cable anchor Chris Matthews, who in 2010 used the phrase "shuck and jive," on Wednesday assailed Sarah Palin as racist for using the phrase "shuck and jive." Referring to a Facebook post the former Alaska governor wrote about Obama and Libya, Matthews ranted, "You know, a dog whistle is a dog whistle...A trumpet call is another."

The MSNBC host insisted that "shuck and jive" has "a particular ethnic connection" and "to throw it at the president as an ethnic shot is pretty blatant." On July 7, 2010, Matthews, while talking to Rachel Maddow about her visit to Afghanistan, wondered, "What has it been like, as you shuck and jive, hang out with the men over there, the women over there, in uniform risking their lives every day?" The late Tim Russert also used the term on July 18, 2003.

On Tuesday's edition of MSNBC's The Ed Show, all but official Obama campaign surrogates Ed Schultz and Richard Wolffe discussed the third and final presidential debate. Both declared the president a clear winner and insulted the intelligence of anyone who would disagree. Failing to recognize the irony of what they were doing for Obama, Schultz criticized the Romney campaign for declaring victory -- as if it defied all logic.

"Romney's camp is spinning last night as a victory for him," he said. "What about that? I mean, do they really think the American people are that stupid?" [ video below, MP3 audio available here ]

NBC's Today on Wednesday glossed over the State Department e-mails showing that the Obama administration knew that the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya was carried out by terrorists. Their colleagues at ABC and CBS also minimized their coverage of this latest development, as they boosted the latest slam on Republicans from David Axelrod and the President's reelection campaign.

But all three network morning shows cordoned off significant amounts of air time to completely frivolous and celebrity-driven news stories. Here are some examples from Good Morning America, the Today Show, and CBS This Morning:

Lynn Sweet, Washington, D.C. bureau chief for the Chicago Sun-Times, covers the final presidential debate in "Sweet: Obama in command in campaign’s last clash" on the newspaper's Web site.  In the piece she writes:

As soon as Romney pledged not to cut military spending (incorrectly implying that was an Obama proposal — something he has done before) Obama pounced, portraying Romney as woefully uninformed about how a modern military measures its strike force.

On Wednesday, CNN's Carol Costello spent more time on a GOP Senate candidate's remarks on abortion than she did on a new bombshell report on the Libya attacks. Costello devoted just over 12 minutes to Libya, versus 13 and a half minutes to Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock's comments, and his endorsement by Mitt Romney. Costello anchors the 9 and 10 a.m. hours of CNN Newsroom.

Mourdock affirmed his faith-based views against abortion in cases of rape, stating "life is a gift from God, and I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen." Costello said those words "erupted online and re-energized the so-called war on women."

In a continued effort to tag Mitt Romney with a flip-flopper label, on Tuesday's NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams proclaimed that Romney's performance in the final presidential debate "seemed to be a move to the center" on foreign policy issues and asserted that the Governor was "taking positions he has not taken before."

In the report that followed, correspondent Andrea Mitchell declared: "Mitt Romney's switch to a more moderate foreign policy last night was clearly aimed at independent women voters.... Clearly having decided that undecided voters, those swing voters, are more likely to choose a moderate Republican than a hawk."

PolitiFact has received a fair share of criticism from conservatives for their spin-heavy fact-checks. The liberal media, for the most part, has accordingly been dismissive of such conservative complaints. But now even The Daily Beast/Newsweek is joining in on the criticism, with contributor Megan McArdle joining conservatives in noting the fact-checker repeated repetition of a falsehood regarding the Lilly Ledbetter Supreme Court case.

**UPDATE** At 2:30 p.m. EDT, MSNBC mentioned the damaging emails for the first time, coupling it with breaking news of an arrest in the attack on our Libyan consulate.   

Following in the footsteps of its sister broadcast network, MSNBC has continued to ignore the shocking revelation that the White House knew on September 11 that the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was under a well-coordinated terrorist attack. 

As NewsBusters’ Matthew Balan noted, NBC's Today was the only broadcast network morning show this to ignore the story altogether, with MSNBC following suit by remaining silent as well throughout the day.  In contrast, both Fox News and CNN have run numerous stories Wednesday morning.

On Tuesday evening, CBS broke wide open a story on State Department e-mails showing the White House knew on September 11 that the consulate in Benghazi was subjected to a terrorist attack, and that terrorists took credit on Facebook and Twitter. But by Wednesday, the three network morning shows weren't leaping to follow up. ABC and CBS combined devoted just over a minute to the story, while NBC completely ignored it.

By contrast, all three newscasts showed that they were more interested in helping the Democrats in Indiana, aggressively spotlighting Indiana Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock's faith-based affirmation that he did not support abortion even in the case of rape, that even those are children "God intended." Mourdock's "controversial comments" drew more than seven and a half minutes of coverage.

All three morning shows on Wednesday touted White House talking points linking Mitt Romney to a Republican Senate candidate in Indiana who, while speaking about "the horrible situation of rape," called life a "gift from God." Only one program, CBS This Morning, seemed to notice how closely this story mirrored Democratic spin.

As though he was referencing a connection to a criminal, former Democratic operative George Stephanopoulos intoned, "Mitt Romney catching some flak for his ties to a GOP Senate candidate making controversial comments about abortion and rape in a Tuesday debate." Trying to make trouble, reporter David Muir asserted that the GOP campaign is "trying to distance itself from a Senate candidate that Romney endorsed, did a TV ad for." Muir needled, "The [Romney] campaign did not say whether it would ask [Richard] Mourdock to take down this ad." CBS's Norah O'Donnell speculated that the remark could cost Republicans a shot at "control of the Senate." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]