CBS’s Early Show on Friday completely ignored the grilling Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner received on Capitol Hill on Thursday and the calls for his resignation by members of Congress. ABC’s Good Morning America and NBC’s Today both covered the contentious exchanges.

ABC’s Good Morning America provided the most coverage. Correspondent Bianna Golodryga observed that "a handful of Republicans and one Democrat are calling for his resignation" based on the current economic situation. She then played video of Republican Michael Burgess deriding Geithner: "I don't think you should be fired. I thought you never should have been hired."

Another clip featured Republican Kevin Brady directly asking the Treasury Secretary: "For the sake of our jobs, will you step down from your post?" But, even though the Early Show found time for generous coverage of Oprah Winfrey and the announcement that she’s retiring in two years, the news program skipped reporting on the calls for Geithner’s resignation by these Republicans. (House Democrat Peter DeFazio and Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell both have previously made similar announcements.)

As reported on NewsBusters recently, the kill-joy food police are here just in time for the holidays.

 On Nov. 19 ABC's "Good Morning America" aired a recycled study by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a liberal activist group that, if it were given the power, would ban everything from remote controls to Chinese food to donuts to casual dining. But even without that power, the anti-food activists still have the networks eating out of their hand.

For the third time in just two months, ABC's early morning show devoted an entire segment to a CSPI study. The past two studies reported that health labels were too "confusing" for consumers while "leafy greens" were life-threatening. Now CSPI's latest publication attacks movie theater popcorn.

ABC’s Robin Roberts on Thursday pressed a government official on rationing and a new recommendation that women under the age of 50 shouldn’t get regular mammograms. Talking to one of report's authors, she chided, "Dr. [Thomas] Wilt, you know many are feeling that this is trying to save money, that this is a political move."

Roberts challenged Wilt, who is with the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force. Although she didn’t specifically use the word rationing, the implication was clear: "You are an independent panel, but federally funded independent panel. How do you respond to those who feel that this is nothing more than a cost-saving measure?"

On Wednesday’s GMA, the program featured a clip of Dr. Peter Jokich, of Rush University Medical Center. Making a similar point, he derided the report: "I think it’s totally ridiculous. I may not be politically correct, but I think this is really about money and politics. It’s about the beginning of rationing care and I don’t think it’s really about the health of individual women."

Leave it to ABC and its obsession with alternate sexuality to characterize being a male or a female as a "difficult decision." Introducing an interview featuring Chastity (now Chaz) Bono on Nov. 19, "Good Morning America's" Diane Sawyer said, "There can be no decision that you make that is more complex and difficult than gender identification."

Bono explained the hardships of undergoing a sexual "transformation" and the "journey into manhood" to an extraordinarily sympathetic Chris Cuomo, saying, "Gender is between your ears, not between your legs."

This interview only adds to a long list that details ABC's fascination with the sexually bizarre. In July 2009, CMI released a study that found that ABC news programs had featured 76 segments about sexual activity in the past six months. Most of the reports related to political sex scandals or crime cases that contained a sexual element, but 11 promoted alternative sexual arrangements, such as gender changes and, even more disturbing, objectum sexualization - having romantic relationships with objects like F-15 fighter jets and the Eiffel Tower.

Members of the self-proclaimed fastest-growing union in North America have started fights at town hall meetings, share office space with ACORN and spent over $60 million to elect President Barack Obama.

The left-wing, 2.1 million-member Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and its president, Andy Stern, spent much of 2009 campaigning for health care reform that would include a government-run insurance plan, and for the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would make it easier to unionize. Critics of EFCA say it would result in worker intimidation (not something that would bother SEIU, if its recent history is any guide).

Well-connected, Stern was the most frequent White House visitor in the first six months of Obama's presidency.

But ABC, NBC and CBS haven't reported any of those things. In fact, a search of Nexis transcripts for all of 2009 only turned up one story mentioning either SEIU or Andy Stern. That was an Aug. 20 story from Jake Tapper of ABC which identified Stern as "a close ally of the President's and the leader of a major union."

Tuesday’s World News with Charles Gibson showed clips of an interview between Barbara Walters and Sarah Palin which will air on Friday’s 20/20. At one point, Walters seemed to allude to the fact that there is a misconception that Palin once claimed that “I can see Russia from my house,” during the 2008 campaign, as evidence of her foreign policy experience. But Walters did not clearly identify those words as part of the famous Saturday Night Live skit as they were uttered by Tina Fey playing Palin on Saturday Night Live to parody what Palin had actually said in an interview with Gibson from September 2008. Walters:

On the business of “I can see Russia from my backyard,” what you did say to Charlie Gibson was that there were places in Alaska where one could see Russia. Do you still feel that Alaska’s proximity to Russia from whatever place you can see it, is significant foreign policy experience?

As Gibson and Palin discussed the conflict between Russia and Georgia, Gibson had asked last year, "What insight into Russian actions particularly in the last couple of weeks, does the proximity of this state give you?"

Fox News' Bill O'Reilly stated last night that "the left is now peddling Sarah Palin as a shallow demagogue who would lead us to tragic circumstances" during a "Talking Points" segment about the former Alaskan governor's continued assault from the left. He cited CMI's 2008 study, "How the TV Networks Have Portrayed Sarah Palin as Dunce or Demon" as evidence.

O'Reilly stated:

A study last year by the Culture and Media Institute, a conservative group, examined network news coverage of Mrs. Palin from September 29th to October 12^th as she campaigned. It was 69 stories about the governor. 37 of them were negative, 30 neutral, just two, two positive. Twenty-one of the stories portrayed Sarah Palin as unintelligent or unqualified. Eight stories used clips from ‘Saturday Night Live' to ridicule her. ABC News was hardest on Mrs. Palin, closely followed by NBC.

NBC and CBS’s morning shows on Tuesday completely ignored the revelation that the Obama administration’s Recovery.gov website claims to have saved or created jobs in congressional districts that don’t exist. ABC’s Good Morning America devoted 21 seconds to the developing story.

On ABCNews.com, Jonathan Karl wrote, "In Arizona's 15th congressional district, 30 jobs have been saved or created with just $761,420 in federal stimulus spending." There is no 15th congressional district in Arizona. On Monday night’s World News, the network did manage a full report by Karl. He elaborated, "And it lists $34 million spent in Arizona's 86th district. That district doesn't exist either. In fact, in virtually every state, the website lists millions of dollars spent and hundreds of jobs created in fictional congressional districts."

Sarah Palin appeared on Tuesday’s Good Morning America to promote her new book and hit back at liberal condescension from journalists, most notably attacking Katie Couric as arrogant. Speaking of her infamous interview with the CBS anchor during the 2008 campaign, Palin interpreted Couric’s question about what newspapers she read as "How up there in Alaska, in this kind of nomadic, Neanderthal atmosphere that you live in, how are you connected to the world?"

The former governor admitted to interviewer Barbara Walters: "Unfortunately, I was wearing my annoyance on my sleeve. And I shouldn't have done that. Because, it seemed to me that she was asking ‘Do you read?’" After noting that, at that point in the campaign, she had just completed an op-ed for the New York Times, Palin chided, "And that surprised me that [Couric] hadn't done that homework."

Leftists including those in the White House who presumptively and obsessively attack Fox News will not be pleased with this.

At Forbes (HT Hot Air Headlines), S. Robert Lichter of George Mason University's Center for Media and Public Affairs, asks the question, "Fox News: Fair And Balanced?" -- and answers in the affirmative. In the process, the GMU Professor of Communications also makes a number of interesting points about Fox's competitors, discusses the convergence of news and analysis, and provides useful historical context.

Using a methodology that would be difficult to refute, Lichter's work relating to campaign 2008 is in sync with what CMPA found in late 2007 (noted at the time at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog) during the opening stages of the presidential campaign.

Here are key paragraphs from Lichter's commentary (bolds are mine):

Sarah Palin, in an interview that is a part of the lead up to the Nov. 17 release of her new book "Going Rogue," appeared on Oprah Winfrey's TV show on Nov. 16.  Aside from the questions about the campaign, she expressed her irritation with "CBS Evening News" anchor Katie Couric, or as she referred to her - "the perky one."

"Now, obviously, you've why didn't you just name some books or magazines?" Winfrey asked.

Palin explained that she didn't want to come off as unprofessional, but she detected an elitist vibe from Couric with the infamous question about her reading habits.

Good Morning America on Monday began a week of coverage on Sarah Palin’s new book by repeatedly fact checking claims from the Republican and highlighting a attack by the liberals’ favorite "conservative," New York Times columnist David Brooks. Reporter Kate Snow asserted that "even conservatives are on the attack" against Palin.

She then played a clip of Brooks, who has previously gone after Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and others: "Yeah, she's a joke. I mean I just can't take her seriously. The idea that this potential talk show host is considered seriously for the Republican nomination, believe me, it'll never happen."

ABC’s Good Morning America finally picked up on the deep bow President Obama performed for the Emperor of Japan over the weekend. Co-host Diane Sawyer ran through how other U.S. Presidents have greeted either Emperor Akhito or his father, the late Emperor Hirohito over the years — some bowing, some not. Sawyer claimed that Americans are “not trained to greet royalty” and “it’s just too confusing.”

Actually, the government employs lots of experts on culture and protocol to make sure that our presidents are fully “trained” on what to do when they represent our government overseas — which is not to say that all of our presidents perform these duties flawlessly.

Missing from Sawyer’s run-down is a tidbit that ABC White House correspondent Jake Tapper posted on his “Political Punch” blog Sunday afternoon. Tapper said he received a note from an old friend whom he described as “an academic with expertise about the Japanese Empire, and in general a supporter of President Obama.” According to this expert, it wasn’t necessarily incorrect for Obama to bow, but the President’s “forward lurch” was “jarring and inappropriate.”

Barack Obama had his Beer Summit.

Will they call a meeting between former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton the Coffee Summit?

Such seems possible after Clinton's discussion about Palin with ABC's George Stephanopoulos on Sunday's "This Week."

In fact, the following exchange seems destined to be quite the water cooler subject in newsrooms all over America in the coming days (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript):

The Daily Beast on Friday reported that former Democratic aide turned journalist George Stephanopoulos has now pulled ahead of ex-Democratic Governor Mario Cuomo’s son, Chris Cuomo, in the race to become the new co-host of Good Morning America. Correspondent Rebecca Dana quoted an ABC source as saying, "It’s George’s now to lose."

Dana added, "That both contenders are associated with prominent Democrats has helped to add a campaign vibe to the contest for Sawyer’s anchor chair." She then gossiped, "There is a rumor floating around ABC that Mario Cuomo has placed some calls on his son’s behalf..." (Chris Cuomo is also the brother of New York state’s current Democratic attorney general.)

If Stephanopoulos does become the new host of GMA, there would potentially be an opening at his old show, This Week. The Daily Beast asserted that the contenders are Jake Tapper and Nightline co-host Terry Moran, a well known liberal. On February 20, 2009, Moran famously provided this over-the-top comparison between Barack Obama and George Washington: "I like to say that, in some ways, Barack Obama is the first President since George Washington to be taking a step down into the Oval Office."

If you thought that you were going to escape being greenwashed by simply changing the channel for NBC's "Green Week," think again. Now you can't even wile away your time reading a good ol' fashioned thriller. Stephen King's new book, "Under the Dome," depicts a small city on the brink of an environmental disaster (that is, if it can survive the murders, arson, and corruption, of course).

Set in fictional Chester's Mill, Maine, the 1,000+ page tome (King's longest since "It") details the demise of a small town that mysteriously becomes stuck under an invisible, impenetrable dome.

The town faces such King clichés as deception, rape, and drug addiction, but it also discovers that it's on the fast track to environmental doom. The book review by Kevin Kelly of Mercury News describes the town's desperate situation.

"You can't see the dome - until it becomes smudged on the outside by the accumulation of smog and things running into it and leaving stains," he said. "With no steady influx of new air, Chester's Mill begins to smell like a locker room and plants start dying, and as the dome becomes more and more smeared with grime from the outside world, the temperature inside climbs."

Here is the latest episode of NewsBusters’ Notables Quotables show, featuring the liberal media’s most outrageous sound bites.

In this week’s episode we have Chris Matthews wondering what’s wrong with a quick phone call to terrorists, Matt Lauer worried about America getting a big head, and Actor Scott Wolf revealing the inspiration behind his role as a sell-out journalist in a new TV series.

Enjoy the show and to see current and past episodes in a larger format, visit the ‘Notable Quotables Show’ channel on the Media Research Center’s video sharing website, Eyeblast.

 

 

The media gave President Obama credit during the campaign for promising not to raise taxes on the middle class. He was on the trail in New Hampshire when he made a "firm pledge" not to raise taxes on any family "making less than $250,000 a year."

Obama is doing his best to break that promise, but the network news media haven't bothered to report it. On Nov. 6 when he endorsed the tax increase-laden health care reform bill that the House of Representatives passed on Nov. 7, Obama violated his pledge.

While Obama had offered broad generalities supporting various health care reform bills under consideration in the House and Senate, the Nov. 6 statement was the first time he threw his weight fully behind one piece of legislation.

World News anchor Charles Gibson admitted on Tuesday, "I worry about the lack of objectivity and the future of the news business." According to the Boston Herald, the ABC host spoke before the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce and said of Fox News and MSNBC: "I don’t like the fact that they’re delivering news based on the conviction of its viewers." He also derided some viewers who "watch news that plays to their own prejudices."

With no sense of irony, Gibson attacked Republicans for being obstructionist on health care: "It’s not being very productive to have an opposition party that simply says, ‘We are going to fight the president no matter what on health-care reform. We are not going to give you a single vote and we are going to march in lock step against you." He added that this is "not good for the country."

• Networks Decide Attack Wasn't Terror: 85 percent of the broadcast stories didn't mention the word "terror." ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news referenced terrorism connections to the Fort Hood attack just seven times in 48 reports.
• ABC, CBS, NBC Follow White House Line: Before Obama's Nov. 10 speech, 93 percent of the stories had ignored any terror connection. But after Obama hinted at what ABC called "Islamic extremist views," all three networks mentioned terrorism.
• Alleged Attacker's Muslim Faith Not Important Either: Slightly more than one-fourth (29 percent) of evening news reports mentioned that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was a Muslim. Of those, half (7 out of 14) defended the religion or included experts to do so.

Last week, Fort Hood, Texas was the site of the worst mass shooting in history on a U.S. military base. At 2:34 p.m. local time on Nov. 5, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan - one of the military's own - reportedly attacked fellow soldiers, yelling, "Allah Akbar." He then allegedly fired more than 100 rounds into Fort Hood's crowded processing center, killing 13 and wounding 29. This heinous act stunned the nation and captivated the news media.