Fox News Channel

Conservative commentator Sean Hannity was interviewed in the most recent issue of Playboy magazine, and not surprisingly, he was hit hard and hit often from the left.

Yet of all the questions asked by contributing editor David Hochman, potentially the most absurd was when he tried to beat Hannity up with - wait for it! - Rachel Maddow's plummeting ratings:

Despite the fact that Fox News has been shown to be favorable or neutral toward many left-leaning agenda items like immigration or gay marriage, there is still a lot of hatred among many "liberals" that the cable news channel even exists.

Our MRCTV colleague Dan Joseph demonstrated this tendency nicely the other day when he went to the campus of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia and had no problem getting the students there to sign a petition making it legal for the government to spy on and monitor the communications of all Fox News employees. Video is below:

As NewsBusters previously reported, CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson announced last Friday that her computers had been hacked into “by an unauthorized, external, unknown party on multiple occasions in late 2012.”

On Monday, Attkisson told Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly that she thinks she knows who did it (video follows with transcript and commentary):

New Yorker reporter Ryan Lizza caused a bit of a stir in the conservative media world today in a report he filed for the New Yorker about the ongoing debate in the U.S. Senate over an immigration bill that is currently opposed by many conservatives. According to the piece, the so-called Gang of Eight see the role of Florida Republican Marco Rubio as being to “neutralize” conservative talk radio and to get opinion hosts on Fox News Channel to either talk up the legislation or at least not oppose it.

In their view, Rubio, who was initially touted by many conservatives nationally as their great hope even though he was regarded far more skeptically by Florida conservatives, has succeeded in his assignment.

As NewsBusters reported Sunday, CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley commented in a Deadline Hollywood interview that Fox News only has 200,000 to 300,000 viewers.

Fox’s Megyn Kelly marvelously responded on Monday’s America Live, “We beat you in all the debates and on election night, Scott” (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On Friday's All In show, MSNBC host Chris Hayes compared conservatives to clowns as he praised Republican Governor Jan Brewer for breaking ranks with conservatives and pushing for the implementation of ObamaCare in Arizona.

Reminiscent of the time he recently called various Republicans "jackasses" and used some version of the word "jackass" 11 times in one segment, Hayes on Friday used some form of the word "clown" 10 times in just over four minutes.

After teasing the show, the MSNBC host continued:

CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer on Saturday’s Evening News compared the Iranian presidential candidates to members of the Tea Party.

In her first official re-appearance on Fox News Monday, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin told Fox & Friends viewers that Palmer “put the BS in CBS" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

A key to success in business is knowing your competition.

CBS Evening News host Scott Pelley apparently doesn't subscribe to this doctrine, for in an interview with Deadline Hollywood published Saturday, Pelley claimed that Fox News only has 200,000 to 300,000 viewers:

One of the most outspoken conservatives in the past few years has been Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska who was the GOP candidate for vice president alongside Arizona senator John McCain during the 2008 presidential election and a contributor on the Fox News Channel from Jan. 19, 2009, to Jan. 25, 2013, when she withdrew from the network staff to focus on “broadening her message of common-sense conservatism across the country.”

Less than five months later, the cable channel announced that Palin will return as a political analyst next Monday, a move that was hailed by Greta Van Susteren, host of the weeknight On the Record program, who wrote in an email to Politico.com that she is “delighted to have her back at Fox” because "it will drive her critics crazy!"

Not that it absolves them from blame, but one contributor to the Big Three establishment TV networks' utter failure to report on or keep up with developments in the IRS targeting scandal -- failures which have been noted by Geoffrey Dickens at NewsBusters, as well as by the Media Research Center's Brent Bozell on Sean Hannity's TV show last night -- is the Associated Press.

The AP provides much of the raw material for the networks' stories and largely determines the nets' perception as to which stories are important. It is still quite appropriate to refer to it as the Administration's Press, even after Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder admitted to scouring phone records involving 20 business and personal lines used by over 100 AP reporters and editors in April and May of last year. Yesterday's failure by the wire service's Pete Yost to even mention that the IRS scandal was on the agenda at a House Judiciary Committee hearing yesterday involving FBI Director Robert Mueller exemplifies how negligent or intimidated (or both) the AP has become.

On Tuesday night's O'Reilly Factor, mentioning his appearance on NBC's Today that morning, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly observed that the Peacock Network was having a difficult time covering the scandals plaguing the Obama administration: "Look, even when I was at the Today show this morning, NBC News, okay? I would say the most fervent Obama news agency in the country....Even them, they're going, 'Whoa, whoa.'" [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Guest Monica Crowley replied: "Even NBC, Holy smokes! That's when you know he's in trouble..." O'Reilly added: "...they can't defend him anymore, the President, because he's in charge." Crowley countered: "Well, I mean, look, they still go to great lengths to protect him." O'Reilly declared: "Not today they didn't."

Appearing on Monday's The O'Reilly Factor, FNC contributor Bernie Goldberg commented on the dominant news media ignoring or downplaying congressional hearings on the Obama administration IRS scandal, and wondered why President Obama is so critical of the media as he asserted that the President's approval rating would be 20 points lower if the media covered Obama scandals "honestly." Goldberg:

It’s hard to pity someone as smarmy and self-righteous as Jonathan Alter. Still, with all the bad luck that the left-wing pundit has faced lately, it almost makes you want to consider it. Well, ok, not really.

May has been a tough month for the MSNBC contributor. First, an anecdote from his latest book was proven beyond doubt to be an outright fabrication. Yesterday, he was revealed by radio host Don Imus as a conniving, two-faced jerk. Now his reporting is being denounced as “patently, provably false” by Fox News president Roger Ailes.

On Wednesday's The Last Word show, MSNBC political analyst Richard Wolffe -- formerly of Newsweek -- suggested that FNC host Bill O'Reilly was motivated by racism when he recently called it "shady" for President Obama to select Susan Rice as national security advisor to avoid Senate confirmation hearings.

A bit after host Lawrence O'Donnell played several clips of O'Reilly using the word "shady" to describe the move, Wolffe cracked:

It's thankfully been a long, long time since we've heard from Keith Olbermann.

Unfortunately, he came out of the bathtub long enough on Monday to give a Twitter follower his opinion of Attorney General Eric Holder saying, "He should've resigned or been dismissed after the AP overreach. Instead he made a Fox News figure a martyr":

As NewsBusters reported Sunday, Congressman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) on CNN’s State of the Union called White House press secretary Jay Carney a “paid liar.”

On Fox News’s Special Report Monday, syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer took issue with Issa saying, “I’ve argued here for months that Carney is majorly underpaid, and I think that really is the problem” (video follows with transcript and absolutely no need for additional commentary):

Since practically its inception, NewsBusters has been informing readers that MSNBC is not a news network.

In an article to be published in Monday's New York Times, national media reporter Bill Carter actually asked if MSNBC is "being damaged by a perception that it is not really a news channel anymore."

The ice seems to be cracking beneath Attorney General Eric Holder's feet.

When asked by NBC Meet the Press host David Gregory Sunday if Holder is going to "stay in the job" given the leaks investigation scandal, former NBC Night News host Tom Brokaw replied, "Boy, I think it’s tough to see how he does" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

PBS's Mark Shields on Friday, in an attempt to mock Fox News, actually made a bit of a fool of himself.

After noting on Inside Washington that ObamaCare had passed Congress, been signed into law by the President, and affirmed by the Supreme Court, Shields ridiculed Fox News as being "a fourth branch of government...that hasn't approved it" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On Thursday night’s O’Reilly Factor, the Fox News host opened the show by attacking former IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman for visiting the White House 157 times, almost four times as many appearances as Hillary Clinton. O’Reilly hinted this was a “smoking gun” of the White House running the IRS harassment campaign of the Tea Party.

But guess what: this fact of Shulman’s well-worn path to the White House gates has yet to be reported by ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS. O’Reilly can’t believe this number:

Left of center columnist Kirsten Powers on Wednesday called the Obama administration's repeated attacks on Fox News "completely despicable."

Appearing on Fox News's Hannity, Powers noted that "any president would be happy" if there were just one news outlet "that allows people to say things about him that he doesn't like" (video follows with transcript and absolutely no need for additional commentary):

Wednesday's CBS This Morning zeroed in on the House Judiciary Committee's inquiry into whether Attorney General Eric Holder lied under oath during his testimony regarding the Justice Department's controversial investigation of journalists. Jan Crawford's two-and-a-half minute report on the congressional investigation into Holder stood out as the only coverage on the Big Three networks on their Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning newscasts.

Crawford underlined that "conservative and liberal voices" are clamoring for Holder's resignation in the wake of the questionable surveillance of the Associated Press and Fox News' James Rosen. She also asserted that "everyone in Washington is talking about is whether...a survivor, like Eric Holder, gets drummed out."

Imagine if Newtown, Connecticut massacre perpetrator Adam Lanza had lived and gone on to get convicted of the 26 murders he committed. Further, imagine, post-conviction, that his attorney claimed that "things went a little awry" that day. There would be no containing the outrage, or the establishment press coverage.

Kermit Gosnell attorney Jack McMahon was interviewed on Wednesday by Fox News's Megyn Kelly. While a great deal of commendable outrage has been directed at McMahon for his statements and conduct, not enough emphasis has been placed on a comment he made which is analogous to the hypothetical posed in my first paragraph, as it was what triggered Kelly's outrage and her subsequent epic response (YouTube; excerpt begins at 1:33 mark; HT Twitchy.com):

Fox News senior White House correspondent Ed Henry said Friday that when he used to grill George W. Bush press secretaries Dana Perino and the late Tony Snow when he was working for CNN, his colleagues cheered him on in private.

"Then when I was at Fox covering the Obama administration," he told conservative radio host Laura Ingraham, "it can get a little bit lonely sometimes" (video follows with transcript and commentary):