Britain

There ought to be a law against newscasters blatantly lying to the public.

On Monday, MSNBC's Martin Bashir falsely claimed the economic plans put forth by Great Britain and Spain are "the Romney-Ryan budget in action...almost exactly, word for word" without informing his viewers that those countries raised taxes to fight their deficits (video follows with transcript and commentary):

In an interview with British Prime Minister David Cameron aired on Wednesday's NBC Rock Center, Nightly News anchor Brian Williams cautioned Cameron about one of his predecessors: "You'll concede, Prime Minister Blair may never recover from that label that was attached to him. Someone used the word 'poodle' to describe his relationship with President Bush as the march to war [in Iraq] continued."  

Moments earlier, Williams touted Cameron's criticism of the Iraq war: "Cameron, whose wife was in New York on 9/11, gave a speech in '06 criticizing the Iraq war, in which he said, 'Democracy cannot quickly be imposed from the outside. Liberty grows from the ground. It cannot be dropped from the air by an unmanned drone.'"

Novelist (and Socialist Workers Party member) China Mieville wrote the main essay for the London issue of the New York Times Sunday Magazine, "'Oh London, You Drama Queen.'" According to him, London is a mess of racism and youth alienation, and only free public housing and celebration of loud music on the tube will save it. He also excused last summer's burning and rioting, motivated by a "deep sense of injustice": "Youths taking TVs, clothes, carpets, food from broken-open shops, sometimes with dizzy exuberance, sometimes with what looked like thoughtful care."

Even the photo captions are replete with leftist smuggery, contrasting an old-fashioned butcher with a bleak-looking dance club: "Smithfield Market, in Central London, is rooted in the past./The scene at Plastic People, a club in Hackney, looks to the future."

London-based New York Times reporter Alan Cowell sympathized with the British off-shoot of Occupy Wall Street on Wednesday: "British Authorities Demolish Protest Camp at St. Paul's Cathedral."

Moving after midnight, bailiffs supported by police officers dismantled a tent encampment outside St. Paul's Cathedral here early Tuesday, ending a four-month protest that caused tension within the Church of England and resonated with Britons opposed to what they see as runaway capitalist greed.

British Prime Minister David Cameron was embraced by conservatives and euro-skeptics after rejecting a European Union agreement aimed at stabilizing the troubled economic union. Yet the tone of the New York Times news coverage is that he blundered, “isolating” Britain by failing to accept the accord’s requirements, including that members submit their budgets to the EU for approval even before being considered by their country’s own parliaments.

Sarah Lyall and Julia Werdigier reported from London Saturday, “In Rejecting Europe Pact, Cameron Is Isolated.”

The Washington Post on Saturday offered a chiding, negative response to British Prime Minister David Cameron’s decision to veto a new European Union treaty that would have more closely bound the country and meant the possibility of new taxes.

Staff writer Anthony Faiola scolded on the front page, “At the same time, Cameron made life harder for a region desperately trying to unite behind a plan to subdue a debt crisis that is threatening the global economy.” The 26 paragraph story featured only the Conservative Cameron to defend the decision, but touted several outraged and disappointed liberals.

If you don't hear much about the Iranian mob which stormed the British embassy earlier today in future news reports, you can probably at least partially blame the Associated Press, which considers the event so unimportant that it's not even part of its main U.S. site's top ten world stories as of 10:25 p.m. (saved here at host for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes).

For those who are curious as to the identification of the ten stories considered more important, here they are:

New York Times correspondent Alan Cowell issued a moralistic “Memo from London” on Monday on the humble joys of post-World War II austerity compared to today, where the "have-nots" are tempted by things they cannot have: “As the riots in London and elsewhere in August seemed to show, the profound gulf between haves and have-nots has been magnified by the inequalities and envies of a society that has built its newest altars to consumption and greed.”

Cowell used the memoir of a left-wing intellectual to make his point in Monday’s “New Austerity Incites a Bitterness the Postwar Generation Did Without.”

NPR's Philip Reeves slanted towards the Occupy Wall Street on Wednesday's All Things Considered as he played up the "huge outcry" over St. Paul Cathedral in London's dispute with the left-leaning movement, which has an encampment outside its doors. Reeves spotlighted a local official who "called St. Paul's a 'national laughing stock,'" and omitted sound bites from the opponents of the movement.

Host Guy Raz noted in his introduction to the correspondent's report how St. Paul's was a "national treasure" associated with Churchill's funeral and the wedding of Charles and Diana, and continued that it was now "the backdrop for another kind of drama: a protest camp modeled on the Occupy Wall Street movement. NPR's Philip Reeves says it's causing upheaval in the heart of British society."

European-based New York Times reporter Nicholas Kulish filed a big-think off-lead Wednesday from Madrid, “As Scorn for Vote Grows, Protests Surge Around Globe,” and became the latest Times reporter to suggest that the rioters who burned and looted shops in London for shoes and smart phones were actually impoverished outcasts engaged in political protest.

Hundreds of thousands of disillusioned Indians cheer a rural activist on a hunger strike. Israel reels before the largest street demonstrations in its history. Enraged young people in Spain and Greece take over public squares across their countries.

Throughout July and early August, during the weeks of an impending budget crisis, Tea Partiers were repeatedly called vile names, from terrorists to delusional children to people strapped with dynamite in the middle of Times Square. The British rioters, who did inflict terror on London, who were typically delusional youth, and who burned down a number of buildings, were instead "disenchanted."

It seems as though the media mixed their labels on the two activist groups, sympathizing with the rioters while viciously attacking a mainstream and completely non-destructive conservative group. The same sympathy the media felt for the British youth was never applied to the Tea Party, which has always peacefully worked to enact political change.

As NewsBusters reported, MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Wednesday took some poorly-researched cheap shots at conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh.

Limbaugh responded Thursday explaining that this is borne of frustration over the failure of Barack Obama noting, "The Chris Matthewses and the media are very close to the rioters in London in terms of anger, disappointment" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Filling in for host Martin Bashir during the 3 p.m. ET hour on MSNBC on Thursday, left-wing Washington Post writer Jonathan Capehart outrageously compared British Prime Minister David Cameron to deposed Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak for asking UK law enforcement to disrupt social media communication among criminals planning violent riots.

Capehart ranted:

If shutting down social networking, or even the internet, over fears that it's used to organize and possibly bring about civil unrest sounds familiar, it should...when things hit a boiling point in Egypt earlier this year, the entire internet was unplugged for fear that people were using it as a tool to bring about the revolution they so badly desired. And how did that attempt at censorship work out, Prime Minister? Not so well.

[Special thanks to MRC intern Alex Fitzsimmons for providing video of the segment after the break]  

On Tuesday's NBC Nightly News, correspondent Martin Fletcher borrowed a line from Karl Marx as he explained the cause of violent riots in London: "It's a collision between two worlds here, the haves and the have-nots."

Fletcher played up the class warfare angle as he noted how in a wealthy part of the British capital, "This building, 106 New Bond Street, has just been sold for $42 million cash. And what's more, there were 22 cash bidders on the property." He then pointed out: "On an average wage, to buy a house it would take a Londoner 31 years."

Anchor Brian Williams introduced Fletcher's report by proclaiming: "...more on the anger and hopelessness that's fueling a kind of tale of two cities."

As rioters in England set buildings aflame, hurl stones into local shops, and rip flat screen TVs off of store walls, Reuters editor-at-large Chrystia Freeland viewed Prime Minister David Cameron's fiscal policies as the "really radical" culprit.

"I think that this is the result of – directly the result of – the really radical austerity program that the Cameron government is imposing," accused Freeland on the August 10 edition of MSNBC's "Dylan Ratigan Show."

[Video follows page break]

MSNBC anchor Contessa Brewer on Tuesday insisted that a pie throwing attack on Rupert Murdoch, which occurred live on air, "encapsulates what the British people are feeling right now about Rupert Murdoch."

As the cable network aired live coverage of Murdoch's testimony to the British Parliament about the phone hacking scandal, a man appeared in the left corner of the screen and attempted to attack the media mogul. See video below. MP3 audio here.

  On Saturday’s Good Morning America on ABC, after anchor Dan Harris recounted that News Corporation CEO Rupert Murdoch met and apologized to the family of the 13-year-old murder victim whose phone messages were hacked by a News of the World reporter, correspondent Jeffrey Kofman commented that Murdoch reminded him of Ebenezer Scrooge  approaching Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol, rather than a character from a Shakespearean tragedy. Kofman:

Appearing on Thursday's NBC Today, MSNBC host Martin Bashir shared his thoughts on the tabloid phone hacking scandal in Britain and proclaimed that News Corporation owner Rupert Murdoch was "...a combination of Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist, and someone like James 'Whitey' Bulger, the mobster." [Audio available here]

Despite Bashir's outrageous comparison – Abramoff was convicted on corruption charges and Bulger is accused of 19 murders during his time as the head of the Irish mob in Boston – co-host Matt Lauer offered no objection to the claim.

View video after the jump

On Wednesday's NBC Today, correspondent Stephanie Gosk reported the latest details on the phone hacking scandal in Britain involving a Rupert Murdoch owned tabloid and declared: "Damage to the company [News Corporation] may have already been done. And some say it is about time."

Gosk noted that included, "actor Hugh Grant, who in recent months has led his own campaign against the tabloids." A sound bite was played of Grant: "we're talking about pretty nasty people." Gosk went on to speculate that the scandal may spread and put "pressure on Rupert Murdoch's worldwide media empire," which of course includes Fox News. She also argued that in Britain, Murdoch's "political support...has all but disappeared."

On Tuesday's Morning Edition, NPR's Renee Montagne and Scott Horsley spotlighted the "warm welcome" President Obama received during his recent visit to Ireland. Horsley marveled at the "large crowds lining the street to welcome him," as well as the "enthusiasm with which they greeted the American president. This is something we really haven't seen in the U.S. for a couple of years."

Montagne turned to the White House correspondent, who is traveling with the President, to report on Mr. Obama's European visit. After devoting the bulk of the segment to the British portion of the trip, the NPR anchor asked about the commander-in-chief's stop in the Emerald Isle and set up Horsley's effusive reply:

The April 29 wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton has the media world abuzz as the couple prepares to walk down the aisle this week. Although the affair is more than 3,000 miles away and focuses on the royalty of a foreign nation, the U.S. media is giving the wedding overwhelming coverage.

In fact, according to Nielson, and highlighted by the Daily Caller's Laura Donovan, the U.S. media coverage of the wedding is “considerably higher” as a percent of all news reporting “than in the U.K. and Australia.”That is despite the fact that a New York Times/CBS poll found that just 28 percent of Americans say they have followed the wedding “somewhat closely.”

Worse, the media wedding blitz comes at the expense of more important stories impacting the United States, like the bloody drug war just across the border with Mexico.

While it is quite clear that the officials of WikiLeaks are leftists, there are more conservative media outlets picking through its scraps. The Telegraph in the U.K. has found a scandal: that the British government  manipulated the Libyans into releasing a mass-murdering terrorist on his cancer diagnosis:

A Foreign Office minister sent Libyan officials detailed legal advice on how to use Abdelbaset al-Megrahi’s cancer diagnosis to ensure he was released from a Scottish prison on compassionate grounds.

The Duke of York [Prince Andrew]  is also said to have played a behind-the-scenes role in encouraging the terrorist’s release.

On Friday, all three network morning shows expressed sympathy for protestors in London rioting against college tuition increases, despite a Thursday attack on the royal family. While CBS's Early Show, ABC's Good Morning America, and NBC's Today all reported on security concerns over Prince Charles and wife Camilla, each broadcast also lamented Britain's "drastic new budget cuts."

At the top of the Early Show, co-host Harry Smith proclaimed: "There have been these protesters in London for a couple weeks now because tuition hikes for college tuition skyrocketing there." Fill-in co-host Rebecca Jarvis then chimed in by arguing on behalf of the rioters: "Of course they pay very high taxes there so they expect something for those taxes." Later, in an 8:00AM ET hour news brief, anchor Jeff Glor pointed out: "In the last fiscal year, the government spent $60 million on household costs for the royals....But, the government still voted to triple university tuition to $14,000 a year to help control the deficit."

On Wednesday's CBS Evening News, anchor Katie Couric described British efforts to curb government spending: "Britain's new conservative government outlined the sharpest cuts in public spending in six decades....to see if that kind of severe belt-tightening can cure an ailing economy."

Correspondent Mark Phillips warned of the fiscally conservative approach: "It's a high-stakes roll of the economic dice involving massive spending cuts and huge job losses." He rolled a pair of dice onto a Monopoly board as he made that declaration. After detailing some of the planned cuts, Phillips explained: "The projected government job losses –  490,000, about one in ten government workers."r />
Correspondent Mark Phillips warned of the fiscally conservative approach: "It's a high-stakes roll of the economic dice involving massive spending cuts and huge job losses." He rolled a pair of dice onto a Monopoly board as he made that declaration. After detailing some of the planned cuts, Phillips explained: "The projected government job losses –  490,000, about one in ten government workers."