Broadcast Television

In all the brouhaha last week over the incendiary comments made by Barack Obama's pastor the media seemed to forget to partake in their traditional Holy Week Christian-bashing excercise.  There were a few entries in the "Easter Hit Parade," like the Comedy Central show "Root of All Evil" which my boss, Brent Bozell, wrote about in a column recently, and an episode of "Law and Order" which featured another Christian-stones-someone storyline.

I suppose it's good news that there was less faith flagellation courtesy of the liberal media, and yet at the same time it's sad that I was expecting to find it at Easter time.  But the fact remains that Christmas and Easter are generally times when the media attacks on Christians are more pronounced.

For atheists it's a different story.

Editor's Note: This originally appeared in Human Events today -- Monday, March 24th.

The Big Three Networks and Their Plan to Protect Obama (PPO)Why did it take until Thursday March 13, 2008, for the nation to begin to learn about Barack Obama's pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright? The man whose Trinity United Church of Christ Obama has attended and generously funded for seventeen years? Whom he had publicly and repeatedly cited as his mentor and had named as a campaign advisor? Whom he chose to perform his wedding and baptize his two daughters?

Because, until then, we were in the midst of Phase I -- preventative medicine -- of the media's version of campaign health care for the Senator's Presidential bid. Call it the Plan to Protect Obama (PPO).

The Reverend Wright story had been percolating beneath the surface for several years. It finally broke through to widespread dissemination last week. A picture is worth a thousand words -- moving pictures with audio of Wright's anti-American, paranoid rantings from the pulpit have finally inspired many more than that.

Democrats dialing for damsels don't get labeled with the big "D"

Changing His MindRonald Reagan often said "I did not leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me."

For floundering and foundering New York Governor Eliot Spitzer -- a twist on the Gipper's words. Spitzer didn't leave the Democratic Party: the Media just didn't see the need to mention the fact that Spitzer was - at least until noon Wednesday -- one of the most powerful Democrats in the nation.

On Monday afternoon, the Big Three Networks (NBC, ABC and CBS) and the Associated Press led the charge of the wall-to-wall coverage of the breaking news that Spitzer was involved with an interstate prostitution ring. And with near unanimity they failed to mention that Spitzer is a Democrat.

Spitzer - who since his years as the Big Apple's swashbuckling anti-capitalist Attorney General the Press has glowingly called the Champion of the Everyman -- was caught on one or more wiretaps dialing for damsels to the tune of $5,500 an hour.

Only the press can fail to see the irony of calling someone who inherited $500 million - and who hires ladies of the evening at hourly rates equal to a semester's tuition at a state university - a champion of the everyman.

Perhaps New York Governor Eliot Spitzer believes he can weather the firestorm over his scandal about his patronizing of a high-class prostitution ring. However, he is battling an element that will keep his scandal alive in the public more than the usual political scandal---humor. Spitzer's breaking scandal is less than a day old and already the media and the blogosphere is filled with many jokes and parody songs about his situation. Even many liberals are laughing at Spitzer since the humor generated by a self-righteous politician involved in a sleazy scandal involving a prostitution ring is just too hard to ignore. David Letterman led off his show with several jokes on this subject:

Do you think it’s too soon to be hitting on Mrs. Eliot Spitzer?

Did you happen to see the press conference? Very dramatic. Eliot Spitzer was there. He had yellow crime scene tape draped around his pants – crazy.

The thinking now is that the governor may step down now to spend less time with his family.

[H/t: TS III and the Life of Rubin. Video below the fold.]

The Media, as Sisyphus, Unwinding its Terror TaleThere is a push by the Jurassic Press -- in two directions at once -- to frame just-so their presentation of the murder and murderers engaged in the attempted global implementation of political Islam.

One such shove was again demonstrated by the New York Times this past February 13th. The Media attempt to present these bits of human flotsam -- and their family members and friends -- in the most sympathetic of possible lights. The Times portrayal of the mourning father and grandfather of recently rubbed out Hezbollah serial assassin Imad Mugniyah -- responsible for amongst many other atrocities the 1983 bombing of the Marine Corps barracks in Beirut (American death count 241) is nothing more than another attempt to humanize these inhuman creatures.

The other Press effort underway is the minimization of the evil of these acts and actors. There is even a feel to some of these reports that those delivering them almost do not wish to have to do so, but are forced to by circumstances and forces (the Internet, anyone?) beyond their control.

Key facts that would exhibit the depths of barbarism mined by these men (and women and, sadly, their bloodletting-by-proxy children) are left out.

A couple at the "cross roads" of a "complicated" love story.  That's how Diane Sawyer set up the feature on a transgendered Microsoft executive, his/her wife, and their son in the 8:00 half-hour on "Good Morning America."

The socially progressive bent of GMA was evident in the lack of context or perspective given to the family's story.  No consideration was given to the glaring social issues raised. It was reported as just another human-interest story.

Video (2:00): Windows (7.31 MB), plus MP3 audio (917 kB)

The five-minute feature, reported by Neal Karlinsky, explained the conflict Michael Wallent had with his identification as a male, his decision to become a female and the ramifications of that decision in his workplace and at home. 

Unfortunately, it is not what you think

Sorely DispleasedIt seems it all depends on who is doing the asking.

ABC News spent a good portion of last week's morning programming in deep prostration and self-analysis in response to criticism that their journalistic presentation suffered from partiality.

Could it be? Had we at the Media Research Center (MRC) -- after twenty-one years of protracted press analysis and serial and sober exposition of liberal bias in all manner of broadcast and print reporting -- finally saturated the consciousness of a member of the Network Big Three?

Sadly, no.

Monday’s NBC psychic crime drama "Medium" featured a plot line in which an Arizona senator and former POW is discovered to be a two-time murderer and a cannibal. While it is safe to assume that the story was written before the Hollywood writers’ strike, and before the rise of John McCain to front-runner status for the GOP presidential nomination, the blatant use of McCain’s personal history, as a politician and Vietnam POW, as grist to feed the murderous plot is obvious.

Video (1:43): Windows Media (6.23 MB), or MP3 audio (498 kB).

In Monday’s episode, titled “Aftertaste”, the medium (“Allison DuBois,” played by Patricia Arquette) suspects an ex-POW Arizona state senator is involved in a murder she sees in her dreams. Through a series of psychic flashbacks, she discovers that the senator (“Jed Garrity,” played by Gregory Itzin), as a young Army captain held by the North Vietnamese, proposed to his cellmates that they kill and eat a dying American soldier rather than starve to death. “Garrity” drew the short straw and committed the actual murder himself by strangling the dying soldier.

I have to give WISN TV reporter Kent Wainscott of Milwaukee a lot of credit for not breaking out laughing in the middle of his report on a Democrat superdelegate. If you think of Democrat superdelegates as hardened cigar-chomping big city type professional pols, think again. Democrat superdelegate and college student, Jason Rae (photo), is the exact opposite of that old stereotype. In fact, one could say he is just plain silly as you can see in this video report about him. Among the things that makes Jason Rae so comical is his bloated sense of self-importance which Wainscott breathlessly plays into at the beginning of his report:

Jason Rae may look like a typical college student but he has suddenly become one of the most important players in the race for the White House...

...He's had a string of national interviews and some unexpected and, to him, unbelievable phone calls...

The news just keeps getting worse for old-fashioned media outlets that disseminate news: more and more people are turning away from them and relying instead on the Internet for information.

Such was the conclusion of a new We Media/Zogby Interactive poll released Wednesday.

As reported by Reuters (emphasis added throughout):

Standard-free journalism on parade all day on NBC's Sunday

Forgotten But
Not GoneIt was another do-as-we-say, not-as-we-do day for the National Broadcast Company this past Sabbath.

Over the weekend NBC offered up their latest versions of Tim Russert's Meet the Press and the Chris Matthews Show -- the latter being political television's answer to Jerry Springer. In them we were treated to two more glittering examples of all that is wrong with the Jurassic Press.

That being the woeful lack of journalistic ethics demonstrated by those at the heights of the media mountain, and the utter shamelessness they and their colleagues exhibit upon their being outed as amoral hacks.

At least according to "Vagina Monologues" playwright Eve Ensler, and Jane Fonda.

Apparently the Today show had not had enough of this dynamic duo earlier in the program, when the fabulously classy Miss Fonda used another word for "vagina" that begins with the letter "c".

So they brought the pair back for the 10 o'clock hour, and America was again regaled with their brilliant and insightful perspective. A perspective, and a vernacular -- it must be noted -- that would get any man on the planet at the very least slapped silly.

The video, Miss Ensler's political genital declaration (which we think grossly underestimates the chronology and the total) and Miss Fonda's in-depth analysis of New Orleans' vagina-ness, follows below.

It it looks like CBS's resurrected nuclear holocaust survival drama “Jericho” is turning left. “It intentionally resembles Iraq” this season. Co-producer Jon Turtletaub stated “'Jericho' is not ignoring the political and social landscape” and star Skeet Ulrich added, “I feel like we were really making a statement to some extent.”

There were previous hints about “Jericho's" shift. In season one, main characters referred to military contractors as “mercenaries” and conspiratorial forces within the government were involved in setting off the nukes. The complication of the “occupation” of the “good” “Jericho” by the “bad” government mirrors the left's position on Iraq and the lefty screed that one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist.

A New York Times article about “Jericho's” return tonight at 10 pm EST hints at the change (bold mine throughout):

Sometimes a cough is just a cough, and sometimes a cough is a way to avoid answering messy questions about the role of your race-baiting, skirt-chasing ex-president husband with a penchant for perjury might have in your White House.

With just 20 seconds to go in a Super Tuesday interview on San Francisco's KTVU-TV, interviewer Ross McGowan asked, “How will you use your husband, Bill Clinton, in the administration?” As soon as McGowan mentioned Bill's name, Hillary's theatrical and oddly persistent coughing began--and coincidentally continued until time ran out.

Alas, the potentially uncomfortable answer to McGowan's question never came. Gossip site TMZ.com posted the video of Hillary Clinton's health crisis.

The writers' strike is giving conservative fans of "24" a temporary reprieve from a maddening, preachy plots planned in the new season. So argues Bryan Preston at Hot Air, noting that Hollywood praises liberal anti-military, anti-war on terror fare like "Redacted," while it can't abide a pro-American, pro-war on terror far like "24," despite the latter being vastly more successful as a commercial enterprise than the former.

Preston notes that Day 7 of "24" opens by featuring lead character Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) defending his actions before a congressional committee that will doubtless rail against his methods in obtaining intelligence from terrorists. He notes this merely gives fictional liberal senators air time to echo arguments "24" fans here time and again from real life liberal politicians and the mainstream media (emphasis mine):

Pour Some Sugar On Me

Hillary Rodham Clinton (HRC) is having a one hour town hall meeting on the Hallmark Channel this evening, the eve of Super Tuesday, with an extra half hour for internet interaction. It begins at 9:00pm EST.

The hostess? Former ABC News pseudo-journalist and current Clinton endorser Carole Simpson.

The only thing that might be more lovey-dovey (and nauseating) than this arrangement is its description by New York Democrat Representative Anthony D. Weiner.

(Diabetics beware.)

Yesterday, NewsBusters' Kyle Drennan noted how CBS used the news of two coordinated and related suicide bombings in Baghdad to declare that "the new Baghdad feels a lot like the old Baghdad," and as a platform for a far-left guest to declare that "the surge isn't working."

Drennan's first commenter noted the mentally impaired state of the women who blew themselves up -- something CBS "somehow" failed to report.

CBS was not alone in ignoring or downplaying that important aspect of the story, as blogger Confederate Yankee reports (links are in his original; bold is mine):

Two suicide attacks on pet markets in Baghdad today have left approximately 100 killed and twice as many wounded. Both attacks used women "with Down's syndrome" according the the Daily Mail and less specifically, they were described as "mentally disabled" according to CNN.

Both bombs appear to have been remote detonated. These women probably did not know they were carrying explosives at all, and it would probably be fair to include them among the victims.

Left wing think tank hatchet reporting

The Establishment Media's Weapon of ChoiceAnd you thought only the New York Times was engaged in not-for-profit journalism.

Behold the Center for Public Integrity (CPI), who on Wednesday made headlines across the nation with their report -- co-authored with the Fund for Independence in Journalism (FIJ) -- entitled "Iraq - The War Card: Orchestrated Deception on the Path to War".

The Establishment Media hailed the study's lead "finding" -- 935 false statements by Bush Administration officials in the two-year period leading up to the launch of the War. The Associated Press, CNN, MSNBC, the Washington Post and -- of course -- the New York Times were all exhilarated to once again climb aboard the "Bush Lied - People Died" Express.

Dan Rather's lawsuit against CBS may go forward.

By omitting key facts of the original "Rathergate" story from his report Thursday, Associated Press Writer Samuel Maull managed to give the former CBS news anchor's contentions an appearance of credibility.

Here is how Maull's report began (HT Little Green Footballs; more permanent link to same story used here):

A judge said Wednesday that he was leaning toward allowing Dan Rather's $70 million lawsuit over his being fired by CBS to proceed.

"I concluded there was enough in the complaint (by Rather) to continue with discovery (pretrial research)," state Judicial Hearing Officer Ira Gammerman said at a hearing on CBS' motion to dismiss the case.

I've noted previously that Old Media has developed a squeamishness towards describing this time of year in business stories as the "Christmas shopping season."

In the midst of media criticism of Mike Huckabee's Christmas ad, including the Whoopi Goldberg-Joy Behar exchange on "The View" noted earlier today by NewsBusters' Justin McCarthy, how interesting it is that one of Hillary Clinton's latest ads in Iowa joins in the C-word sqeamishness (HT Hot Air, whose Bryan Preston calls it "Hillary's Unintentionally Revealing Christmas Ad").

The ad shows Mrs. Clinton wrapping presents for the American people, including "Universal Health Care," "Alternative Energy," "Bring Troops Home," and "Middle Class Tax Breaks" (where have we heard that undelivered promise before?). In search of the final present to wrap, she asks, "Where's Universal Pre-K?" Finding it, she says, "Ah, there it is."

(Three of these "presents" to the American people would have to be paid for with money coming from the American people in the form of taxes -- but that's for another time.)

Then comes the ad's final new slide:

Here's something you don't see every day: the daughter of the President calling her dad while doing an interview on national television.

Yet, that's what happened on "Ellen" Wednesday (taped Tuesday) when host Ellen Degeneres didn't believe guest Jenna Bush could just pick up the phone and call her dad any time she wanted.

Marvelously, Jenna ended up being right.

What follows is the partial transcript of this absolutely charming phone call (video available here):

First published in Human Events on November 27th, 2007.

Wash, spin, rinse, spin. Phone, spin, report, spin, poll, spin. The similarities between the work of the mainstream media and a laundry machine are striking. Yet there is nothing about the cycle -- the spin-report-poll-spin cycle -- that does for political events what detergent does for your boxers or briefs.

The media, as One, spend days or weeks bashing someone or something they do not like. They then conduct a poll to prove to you that they were right all along. In a campaign season, their one-sided coverage is calculated, then executed to produce a result. It’s not about reporting the events, it’s about changing the prevailing view.

And the polls -- such as the ones by the media, which are not independent surveys like those undertaken by the likes of Rasmussen or Gallup -- aren’t intended as much to gauge the public view of a candidate or events as they are to reinforce that which they have “reported”, or provide the media guidance on how effective their spinning of the news has been.

Team Edwards, both eminently coiffed candidate John and his designated political hitter bride Elizabeth, on Wednesday, Novemeber 21st cancelled their scheduled appearance on The View, doing so, according to the UnDynamic Duo, to “honor the members of the Writers Guild of America”, who are currently on strike.

Not to be outpandered, Michelle Obama, wife of the incredibly audacious Barack, later that same day pulled out of her December 5th guest co-hosting duties.

Obviously, sucking up is more important than being sucked up to in Democratic presidential politics.

This is related to nearly every Donkey candidate promising to not participate in a scheduled December 10th CBS debate (moderated by the ratings Juggernaut Katie Couric) should their news writers decide to join their union brethren and sistren (one must be, in this age of PC, all-inclusive) and abandon that foundering network vessel to the waves unscribed.

The Anchoress, a three-time Weblog Awards finalist and 2007 Catholic Blog Awards Winner (congratulations!) in the Best Political/Social Commentary category (scroll down at link to see it), delivered a cold but necessary shower earlier this evening to those of us who are tempted to exaggerate or overstate the impact New Media is having on most Americans.

I'll bet that a lot of us can relay similar stories to the ones she referred to in her very perceptive post ("Good news leaks past the embargo on good news…"; links that contradict the Old Media-driven beliefs described and bolds/italics were included in her original):

Unfortunately, it is still true that until a new president is installed in the WH, preferably one with a D after the name, only the downsides are newsworthy, and that holds true in every subject. Every subject. My elderly family members are convinced that everything, everywhere, is going to hell, and they are fretful and terrified. They think everyone is out of work, the economy is in a recession, the war in Iraq is lost and there are no real terrorist threats - that’s just made-up stuff. They’re sure America is dying. They are sure the world is headed for famine. They are depressed and do not want to send out Christmas cards, because how can you do that when so much is bad in the world?

I'm sure as a concerned social observer, CBS "Evening News" anchor Katie Couric may genuinely think we as a society are too addicted to TV. That said, I can't help but feel that her persistent third-place status in the broadcast evening news race is part and parcel of her Andy Rooney-Lite rant against the boob tube. Here's the November 7 page from Katie Couric's "Notebook" (see video here):

This week in Newsweek, writer Allison Wood complains about seeing television everywhere, and I think we're on the same wavelength.

It's in your living room, the kitchen, the bedroom. Leave home and hail a taxi, it's there too. A lot of cabs now have little TV screens bombarding you with news and weather as you head to wherever you're going.

It seems that no bad Hillary Clinton deed goes unresponded to.

As we are in the midst of a presidential campaign, this by itself is not an issue. That it is the national media that is leading this charge is. One need focus on but the latest corners of the Clinton pantheon to come to light to see the full court press the press puts on when their girl needs them.

In an October 10 Boston Globe interview, Senator Clinton let her socialism slip a bit, saying "I have a million ideas. I can't do all of them. I happen to think in running a disciplined campaign - especially when it comes to fiscal responsibility, which is what I'm trying to do - everything I propose I have to pay for. You know, you go to my website, you'll see what I would use to pay for what I've proposed. So I've got a lot of ideas, I just obviously can't propose them all. I can't afford them all. The country can't afford them all." (Emphasis ours.)

The Independent Television Service was established by Congress in 1988 with legislation directing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) to establish ITVS with "a national coalition of independent producer groups." Currently, CPB awards $15 million a year to ITVS, a one-sided, left-wing "independent" filmmakers’ organizing center. ITVS saw its purpose to be "a catalyst for change, a way for independent producers to participate in and define the cultural dialogue of public television." Today, that "cultural dialogue" is being defined from Nancy Pelosi’s congressional district, at 651 Brannan Street in the city of San Francisco.

When it comes to sexual politics, the tax dollars funneled into ITVS have long been used to promote the libertine left, beginning in the early 1990s with the films of the late Marlon Riggs, a gay black filmmaker and the maker of the explicitly gay film "Tongues Untied," and a liberal darling who drew taxpayer funding from a plethora of government "arts" agencies. That history of left-wing advocacy against social conservatives funded and promoted by ITVS continues to the present:

The networks and the newspapers that compose the "mainstream media" "don’t care" if they’re biased towards liberals according to former CBS reporter and best selling author Bernard Goldberg. Appearing on the November 1 edition of "The O’Reilly Factor," Goldberg responded to the recent Harvard study, cited by NewsBusters, that Democrats do get more positive coverage and less negative coverage than their Republican counterparts.

Goldberg also opined that "if another study came out about another kind of bias against women or against minorities, they’d establish a blue ribbon panel to investigate it. But bias against Republicans, they don’t care."

Network morning news programs showcase musicians all the time with concert series and the like, and sometimes musicians make political statements in between songs, as Bruce Springsteen did on the September 28 "Today" show. But usually those segments are fluffy revenue raisers meant to hook audiences with popular musical acts. The politics are notable for their general left-wing slant, but otherwise unconnected to the news reporting on the program or the network.

Not so with Michael Stipe's appearance on the October 10 "Anderson Cooper 360," which will give Stipe and his band REM a platform to make a politically correct ecological statement in line with CNN's upcoming special, "Planet in Peril."

According to CNN.com:

(CNN) -- Rock group R.E.M. plans to debut a song from its upcoming album Wednesday on CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360°" program.