CBS

The Tea Party grassroots protesters have made no secret of their support for limited government and lower taxes. But from the perspective of network reporters and anchors, the Tea Party’s message was more radical: “no government” and “no taxes.”

On May 10, the IRS admitted to flagging more than 100 Tea Party-related applications for higher scrutiny, including applications that included the words “Tea Party” and “patriot.” But even before that targeting began, the networks had portrayed the Tea Party as a extreme group opposed to taxation, instead of one supporting smaller government.

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."

On Tuesday's CBS This Morning, John Dickerson spun a front page scoop from the Washington Post that spotlighted the several private meetings that a top Obama health care adviser had with investment firms on the future implementation of ObamaCare: "It's a little hard to see what those investment firms got that wasn't already publicly available."

The liberal CBS political director brushed aside concerns that "some traders are gaining access to information that is not available to investors in general or the wider public", as Post writer Tom Hamburger outlined in his Sunday article. Dickerson asserted, "There's a lot of information exchange that wouldn't necessarily have to be sinister."

Former Barack Obama senior advisor David Axelrod on Tuesday demonstrated why it's absurd for him to have been hired by NBC News at the beginning of his previous boss's second term.

Appearing on Morning Joe, Axelrod struck back at CBS's Bob Schieffer for his criticism of the White House on Sunday's Face the Nation (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Just posted to MRC.org this Memorial Day, the latest edition of MRC's Notable Quotables newsletter, recounting the most outrageous quotes from the liberal media. This week: the media warn that "voters will punish" Republicans if they "overplay their hand" and actually investigate the multiple scandals swirling around the Obama administration.

At the same time, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell uniquely insists that there's "nothing wrong" about the IRS targeting the Tea Party, a view which makes him more extreme than most of his left-wing MSNBC colleagues, while the always-sycophantic Chris Matthews has this advice for President Obama: "Stop taking advice from sycophants."

The best quotes (including five videos) are below the jump; the full edition is posted here.

CBS's Face the Nation Sunday spent fifteen minutes discussing climate change and amongst other things its impact on tornadoes - in particular the EF-5 that hit Moore, Oklahoma, last week.

As not one global warming skeptic was invited to participate in the panel, I've taken the liberty of getting opinions from some of the leaders on the realist side of the debate (video follows with commentary and full transcript of the segment at the end of the post):

As NewsBusters has been reporting, CBS's Bob Schieffer has been coming down hard on the Obama administration in recent weeks.

That continued Sunday when the Face the Nation host delivered a special commentary wherein he said that Attorney General Eric Holder heading the review of his department "so deeply involved" in the leaks investigation scandal "makes no sense to me" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Touting the Boy Scouts' "landmark" and "historic" decision to allow openly-gay members, CBS, ABC, and NBC gave supporters of the decision three times as many quotes as their opponents got on Friday morning's news stories.

The networks gave 10 soundbites to supporters of the new Scouts policy and only three to its opponents. Supporters included President Obama, gay scout Pascal Tessier, and former den leader Jennifer Tyrell.

Friday's CBS This Morning, unlike NBC's Today, briefly picked up on NBC journalist Michael Isikoff's significant reporting from Thursday that Attorney General Eric Holder's "signed off on a controversial search warrant" against Fox News' James Rosen and "authorized seizure of his private emails." However, unlike their strong "Obama's war on journalism" label of the scandal on Thursday, Gayle King and Bob Schieffer gave a more subdued response to this new detail.

King pointed out that "Holder signed off on allowing an investigation into some reporters' e-mails", but merely wondered if President Obama was in an "awkward position" as a result. Schieffer did assert that "there's no question in my mind this was an outrageous overreach", but didn't call for an investigation into the administration's surveillance of Rosen and the AP [audio available here; video below the jump].

So the Boy Scouts of America have caved, voting on May 23 to allow openly gay Scouts. It was probably inevitable – just as the organization will inevitably be forced to drop its ban on openly gay adult Scout leaders. Cue the sound of popping champagne corks in newsrooms and TV studios up and down the coasts.

When news first broke back in February that the Boy Scouts of America might allow local charters to decide their own policies on including gays as Scouts and leaders, the broadcast networks were exultant. Well they should be, because they and the rest of the media have waged a long campaign against the Scouts on behalf of the gay lobby. 

A pro-Israel media watchdog accused "60 Minutes" of anti-Semitism at CBS's shareholders meeting Thursday.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the complaint stemmed from a segment aired April 22, 2012, called "Christians of the Holy Land" (video follows with partial transcript and commentary).

The Big Three networks coverage so far of the Justice Department's questionable investigation of Fox News' James Rosen has followed a similar pattern to that of their coverage of the Kermit Gosnell case. Jan Crawford's report on Thursday's CBS This Morning was the first full report on growing controversy on ABC, CBS, and NBC's morning and evening newscasts. NBC briefly covered the investigation on Tuesday's Today, and ABC has yet to mention it.

Crawford pointed out how the DOJ's "unprecedented" surveillance of Rosen has "really just set off a firestorm of criticism from the left and right. For the first time ever, a presidential administration is treating news reporting like a crime, and a reporter like a criminal suspect." [audio available here; video below the jump]

Recent college grads are in a tough spot, with student loans that need repayment and an economy that is leaving many of them underemployed or worse. But the network news media have exaggerated individual burdens of student debt by using examples of enormous rather than average debts. They’ve also often ignored systemic problems that have led to the “crisis” of student loan defaults, at the same time that the left has called for bailouts.

When network news stories include college students who talk about how much they owe for their education, the average amount was a whopping $66,833. But the 2012 average student loan debt, was much lower: $27,253.

What does a murderous jihadist terrorist have to do to get some recognition for his cause? You hack a British soldier to death in broad daylight on a London street while shouting “Allahu akbar” and then “swear by the almighty Allah” that you’ll never stop fighting, and the U.S. broadcast networks still can’t bring themselves to utter a word about Islam.

True, the ABC CBS and NBC evening broadcasts called the attack “terrorism,” but for all the information they gave viewers, the attackers might have been Basque separatists or animal rights zealots.

On Wednesday's CBS This Morning, open Obama supporter Gayle King strongly hinted to Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn that he would face voter backlash for seeking cuts in the federal budget to pay for tornado disaster relief: "You voted against relief plans for Hurricane Sandy, and it sounds that you would do the same if it was raised in Oklahoma. Do you worry about alienating your constituents?"

The Republican politician shot back that he didn't want the next generation to foot the bill for the recovery from the EF-5 tornado that devastated Moore, Oklahoma on Monday, and then strongly criticized the multi-billion dollar Hurricane Sandy relief package audio available here; video below the jump]:

Babies aren’t the only victims of abortion; women are too. While last week all three networks begrudgingly covered babies slaughtered in Kermit Gosnell’s Philadelphia abortion clinic after failed abortions, they continued to censor other stories about the dangers of abortion to women.

During a “Stop the Killing" Maryland rally on May 20, Live Action President Lila Rose outlined the media’s take on women affected by abortion to MRC’s Culture and Media Institute: “There’s absolutely been a media cover-up of the violence that abortion not only does to the baby but to the mother.” Rose continued to say, “If the media wants to be fair and balanced and report the truth they need to be reporting stories that affect women in a very personal intimate way, with our lives at stake.” (Video Below)

Dylan Byers of Politico reports “Sharyl Attkisson, the Emmy-award winning CBS News investigative reporter, says that her personal and work computers have been compromised and are under investigation.”

"I can confirm that an intrusion of my computers has been under some investigation on my end for some months. But I'm not prepared to make an allegation against a specific entity today as I've been patient and methodical about this matter," Attkisson told Politico on Tuesday. She suggested it could be related to the probe of Fox reporter James Rosen:

While much of the news coverage Monday evening and Tuesday morning was dominated by coverage of the tornado that devastated Moore, Oklahoma, Tuesday's NBC Today did manage to provide two news briefs, totaling a minute and fourteen seconds, to the stunning revelation that the Obama administration searched through the private emails of Fox News chief Washington correspondent James Rosen, supposedly as a part of a leak investigation.

Neither ABC nor CBS bothered to make any mention of their media colleague Rosen being named a "criminal co-conspirator" for simply doing his job as a journalist. Instead on Tuesday, ABC's Good Morning America devoted a four-minute segment to Michael Douglas and Matt Damon discussing their gay love scenes in a movie about Liberace. Meanwhile, CBS This Morning squeezed in a forty-seven-second news brief on the death of The Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is under fire for soliciting donations from health care companies to underwrite ObamaCare PR efforts to increase enrollment but you wouldn't know that if you only got your news from ABC and NBC or skipped Sunday's edition of CBS's Face the Nation.

The Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) networks have effectively buried the scandal that was first broken by the Washington Post on May 10.

As NewsBusters reported two weeks ago, CBS’s Bob Schieffer is fed up with the White House’s talking points concerning what happened at our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, last September.

His impatience continued on Sunday's Face the Nation when Obama senior advisor Dan Pfeiffer gave stock answers to questions about the three crises facing the President leading Schieffer to first accuse his guest of taking "exactly the approach that the Nixon administration took" and finally scolding him by asking, "Why are you here today? Why isn't the White House Chief of Staff here to tell us what happened?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

In the latest instance of liberal journalists thinking alike, Charlie Rose asked practically the same question on Friday's CBS This Morning that ABC's George Stephanopoulos did on Good Morning America. Rose wondered if congressional Republicans "may overplay their hand and somehow squander what they think is opportunity" on the three scandals currently surrounding the Obama White House.

The CBS anchor proposed this question not even four minutes after Stephanopoulos asked ABC correspondent Jonathan Karl, "Are some of [the GOP] leaders worried that some of the Republicans may be overplaying their hand?" 

For years, NewsBusters has reported how few comedians dare to tell jokes about President Obama.

On the CBS Late Show Wednesday, host David Letterman humorously addressed this saying, “I don't make jokes about him because I don't want the FBI tapping my phone, my phone. That's why” (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Sometimes it's what they neglect to mention that's more revealing than that was.

Disgraced former CBS anchorman Dan Rather, now broadcasting from obscure AXS TV on the high triple-digit end of the cable dial, told Rachel Maddow of an incident back when he was a reporter devoted to hounding Richard Nixon. (Video after page break).

Thursday's CBS This Morning did its best to shift blame away from President Obama on the IRS, Justice Department, and Benghazi scandals currently surrounding his administration. Bob Schieffer shot down comparisons to the Watergate scandal that led to former President Richard Nixon's resignation: "This is not the Nixon administration, where you had burglars and people talking about blowing up the Brookings Institution. This is more of a case – is anybody home?" [audio available here; video below the jump]

Anchor Charlie Rose seconded Schieffer's assessment, asserting that the President "seems like a bystander in his own government." He later stated that "the President has to take control of his own government."

Charlie Rose acted as an apologist for President Obama on Wednesday's CBS This Morning, after former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asserted that the second-term executive was avoiding responsibility for the recent spate of scandals surrounding his administration.

Rumsfeld snarked that "the only thing the President has really taken responsibility for is SEAL Team Six killing Osama bin Laden." Rose interrupted his guest and replied, "Oh, that's not true." [audio clips available here; video below the jump]

The media furor that began Monday night over the Justice Department obtaining two months of phone records from the Associated Press marks the first time in 335 days that any of the Big Three evening newscasts have even mentioned the existence of two criminal investigations into whether White House or other national security officials leaked sensitive secrets, perhaps to politically benefit Barack Obama’s re-election campaign.

This week’s coverage has generally referred to how the FBI is investigating “who leaked details of a highly-classified effort to foil a terror plot,” as NBC’s Pete Williams put it on Tuesday’s Today show. On ABC’s Good Morning America that same day, reporter David Kerley insisted that “the President and White House made it clear they want to go after leakers,” without letting viewers in on how the leading suspects are presumably all top administration officials.

ABC and NBC led their morning shows on Tuesday with nearly 10 minutes of "breaking news" coverage of Angelina Jolie's double mastectomy. This celebrity-driven story was apparently deemed more important than abortionist Dr. Kermit Gosnell being found guilty of three counts of first-degree murder, as Good Morning America and Today devoted just 38 seconds to the Gosnell trial. (audio clips of Jolie coverage available here; video below the jump)

Altogether, the ABC and NBC morning newscasts aired 19 minutes and 3 seconds of coverage on Jolie. Tuesday's CBS This Morning waited 12 minutes to cover the Hollywood news item, but ultimately ended up setting aside 7 minutes and 49 seconds of air time to the surgeries, versus a 18 second news brief on Gosnell. The total Big Three coverage of Jolie on Tuesday morning, including CBS's reporting, added up to 26 minutes and 52 seconds, as opposed to 56 seconds on the Gosnell case.

While the Big Three (ABC, CBS and NBC) networks have all done stories on the Obama administration's seizure of Associated Press (AP) reporters phone records, what is striking is their reluctance to attach Barack Obama's name to the controversy. In seven total stories aired on their evening and morning shows, since the story broke on Monday afternoon, Obama's name was used only six times. Reporters were much more likely to use the generic term "government." For example, CBS's Bob Orr on Wednesday's This Morning described the controversy this way: "The government just simply came in, got the subpoenas, took the phone logs and then notified the AP after the fact."

The reluctance to put Obama's name in these stories is important because it allows the low-information voter to write off the scandal as one caused by faceless government bureaucrats.