PBS

On Monday, Charlie Rose was more than halfway through his 47-minute interview with President Obama on PBS before he finally brought up one of the several scandals surrounding the liberal's administration. Rose pursued Obama about the NSA's leaked domestic surveillance program, but failed to mention any of the other scandals, including the IRS's targeting of conservative groups and the Justice Department's investigation of journalists.

The veteran journalist also echoed the President's critics from the left about "the notion of that you have simply continued the policies of Bush/Cheney...many people say you're Bush/Cheney-lite. And then, people write columns saying, no, no, no, he's not that at all! He's tougher."

After being able to avoid ups and downs in the economy, the PBS NewsHour nightly newscast is laying off employees for the first time in nearly 20 years. According to the New York Times, the show's production company will close its two offices outside of the Washington, DC area.

The show is facing a significant budgetary shortfall of almost one-fourth of its $28 million annual budget:

Jonathan Alter showed up on PBS’s Charlie Rose Wednesday to promote the new book in which he celebrates Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection. The Bloomberg columnist doesn’t seem to understand the irony of his book’s title – The Center Holds. He really does believe President Obama is a centrist, and he attempted to explain the title from the comfort of Rose’s dark studio:

“So the reason I call the book The Center Holds is, you know, not just ObamaCare, but he has defended the American social contract against an assault by the American Right.”

Here's an interesting example of your tax dollars at work: Gwen Ifill, a newscaster for the Public Broadcasting System, uses her television programs to staunchly defend Eric Holder, the scandal-ridden U.S. attorney general, and the Internal Revenue System, which has been accused of targeting conservative organizations that apply for a tax-exempt status.

Not content with using her roles as managing editor and moderator of the “Washington Week” program and as a senior correspondent for the “PBS NewsHour,” Ifill took her crusade online on Sunday, when she posted on Twitter that it's “Fun to see the same (named & unnamed) folks calling for Holder resignation who always have” and asserted that “people don't want to know the details back and forth” of the IRS targeting.

Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift on Friday said something that might explain a lot to conservatives.

After Pat Buchanan commented on PBS’s McLaughlin Group that "the United States is moving towards Third World [education] standards because most of the students coming in now, the principle feeder nation in the country now is Mexico which is at the bottom of the OECD,” Clift replied, “When my ancestors came in they were probably at the low end of the feeder of this also” (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):

Politico's Evan Thomas went where few journalists dare on Friday.

Appearing on PBS's Inside Washington, the former Newsweek editor called Barack Obama "dishonest" and said he was guilty of commiting a "huge act of hypocrisy" (video follows with transcript and absolutely no need for additional commentary):

PBS's Mark Shields said something on Friday's Inside Washington that is guaranteed to make right-thinking Americans across the fruited plain double over in laughter.

Bob Dole "was a certifiable conservative" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

It was only two days ago that one of Charlie Rose’s guests, Politico’s Jim VandeHei, celebrated the disappearance of many outspoken Republicans from the political scene. On last night’s show, Rose invited on a pair of brash Democrats who vanished from Congress recently: former Sen. Chris Dodd and former Rep. Barney Frank.

The former lawmakers were there to discuss the 2010 financial regulatory reform law that bears their names. Rose’s third guest, Robert Kaiser of The Washington Post, recently wrote a book about the Dodd-Frank Act’s journey from conception to passage. Wouldn't you know it, Kaiser was there to sing the praises of the Democrats appearing on the program, hailing the Dodd-Frank Act as a sort of congressional triumph over partisan politics. [Video below. MP3 audio here.]

The new four-part series Constitution USA embodied the conglomeration of Peter Sagal, one of the more left-leaning NPR hosts, and PBS, which has been scrutinized for its abundance of liberal programming, so one might have expected this series to just be another partisan broadcast espousing solely liberal viewpoints.

However, in a rather pleasant surprise, the show covered most issues in an unbiased, nonpartisan manner. For example, when discussing the issue of homosexual marriage, Sagal interviewed proponents from both sides of the debate on this matter of contention. [Link to the audio here]

Politico co-founder Jim VandeHei showed up on PBS’s Charlie Rose Wednesday night, and from the comfort of Rose’s pitch-black studio he tossed aside his journalistic objectivity and aired out his own political opinions – particularly his disdain for Republicans.

Rose had asked his guests -- Politico’s Mike Allen was there, too -- what it would take to fix the country economically and whether Washington was capable of doing it. VandeHei used this as an opening to take a shot at some of the left-wing media’s favorite targets: [Video below. MP3 audio here.]

The top PBS station in New York is marketing itself to potential new donors in the most natural way: by snobbishly mocking commercial TV as “a sea of madness.” Sadly, commercial TV stations probably won’t fight back by mocking prissy British period dramas like “Downton Abbey.” (I might suggest a mop-topped Muppet that looks like Ken Burns that constantly boasts of his own importance as a national story-teller.)

The New York Times reports WNET is undertaking a subway advertising and Twitter campaign mocking fake shows that sound like the “reality” shows currently airing on The History Channel or TLC, channels that conservatives have argued were airing programming similar to PBS fare:

Appearing as a guest on Sunday's Melissa Harris-Perry show on MSNBC, PBS's Christina Bellantoni labeled Virginia Republican gubernatorial nominee Ken Cuccinelli as "very conservative," but, when discussing presumptive Democratic nominee and former DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe, the PBS NewsHour political editor did not include a liberal ideological label.

Additionally, as she recounted Cuccinelli's history of opposing abortion, she euphemistically inserted the word "freedoms" as being what the Virginia attorney general and former state senator has a record of "fighting against." Discussing Cuccinelli and GOP lieutenant govenor nominee E. W. Jackson, Bellantoni asserted:

On last Friday’s Washington Week, PBS moderator Gwen Ifill brought in a panel of four liberal journalists to dissect the three scandals that have plagued the Obama administration the past couple of weeks. Predictably, most of the panelists attempted to downplay the seriousness of the Benghazi fiasco.

Midway through the Benghazi discussion, Ifill turned to The Washington Post’s Ed O’Keefe and posed the question that has surely been on every left-wing reporter’s mind for months: “But Ed, why is this -- why is this stuck? Why is this a story that never went away?” [Video below. MP3 audio here.]

Defending the indefensible can make a liberal journalist a little prickly. How else do you explain Washington Post columnist Colbert I. "Colby" King's specious attack on his fellow Post colleague and Inside Washington panelist Charles Krauthammer this weekend?

It all happened when Krauthammer responded to a Post editorial, published in Thursday’s paper, which asserted that UN Ambassador Susan Rice did not mislead anyone about the nature of the September 11 Benghazi attack. Ninety-seven House Republicans had signed a letter charging that Rice did mislead the public, and the Post editorial demanded that those Republicans apologize to Rice. [Video below. MP3 audio here.]

The PBS NewsHour led off its Thursday evening telecast with a story about the three scandals that currently envelop the Obama administration: the IRS targeting of Tea Party groups, the Justice Department’s subpoena of AP phone records, and the Benghazi attack. Rather than following the package with analysis from a journalist, as PBS often does with stories like this, the taxpayer-subsidized network brought on White House Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri to provide the White House's spin on these scandals.

Even worse, anchor Judy Woodruff did not rise to the occasion with any tough questioning, allowing Palmieri to spin her way right out of trouble. All of Woodruff’s questions dealt with President Obama’s reaction to the scandals; she never grilled Palmieri on whether the White House was involved in any of this. The assumption seemed to be that the president was an innocent bystander in all of these scandals. [Video below. MP3 audio here.]

Last night on his PBS talk show, Tavis Smiley sat down for a cozy conversation with Jeremy Scahill, national security correspondent for left-wing magazine The Nation. Scahill was critical of the Obama administration, as well as the journalists who fail to hold him accountable, throughout much of the interview. However, he did let his mask of objectivity slip at a few points, revealing the liberal face underneath.

Scahill was outraged over the administration’s secrecy surrounding its national security operations, particularly drone strikes. Smiley asked him why the administration has not been more forthcoming about its use of drones, and Scahill partially blamed congressional Republicans: [Video below the break. MP3 audio here.]
 

On his Thursday night PBS program, Charlie Rose attempted to fulfill his duties as a liberal media member by defending the State Department’s dishonest talking points following the September 11 terrorist attack in Benghazi. Rose was grilling Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who was involved in the Benghazi hearings, about his views on the matter.

When Rose asked Chaffetz if he believed there was a coverup, the congressman was ready. He brought up the fact that for days after the attack, the administration claimed the incident had been sparked by a spontaneous demonstration over an anti-Islam YouTube video. But Chaffetz and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform found that to be a blatant lie: [Video below. MP3 audio here.]

On your bike! New York Times's roaming critic Neil Genzlinger reviewed Constitution USA with Peter Sagal, airing Tuesday night on PBS. Judging by the headline, "The Philosophical Rumble Of That Living Document," Genzlinger's editor didn't know what to do with his puzzling, cranky review of the documentary (starring Sagal, liberal host of the NPR game show Wait Wait ... Don’t Tell Me!).

For the second time in a regular news story, PBS mentioned the trial of Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell on Tuesday’s NewsHour. And yet Gosnell was not the subject of the story in question. The mention came at the tail end of a piece on the battle over abortion restrictions in state legislatures.

Anchor Jeffrey Brown presented the trial as the concern of “anti-abortion activists”: [Video below. MP3 audio here.]

On his PBS show Charlie Rose brought on editors of the Financial Times to discuss various topics, including Barack Obama's legacy, and one of them boldly pronounced he could go down in history as one of the best presidents ever. Appearing on Wednesday's Charlie Rose show Lionel Barber, the editor of the Financial Times, predicted that if the economy grew at 3.5 percent in 2014: "President Obama will go down as one of the top American presidents."

That proclamation of greatness came after the CBS This Morning co-anchor expressed his concern for Obama's legacy, as Rose worried that the President was running out of time to see his "boldness...released." (video after the jump)

"When the Daytime Emmy nominees were unveiled Wednesday, some of the more interesting noms went unreported," the Washington Post's Lisa de Moraes noted in a blog post yesterday afternoon. Interesting is quite the euphemism in the case of nominee Kevin Clash.

Clash, you may recall, is the Sesame Street puppeteer who resigned last November after allegations of a sexual relationship with a teenager, has been nominated for a Daytime Emmy award. So what exactly was the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS) thinking? It's not like the nomination occurred before the lawsuit against Clash was made public.

Last week, before the Senate voted on the Manchin-Toomey gun control bill, Tavis Smiley declared that the idea that expanded background checks might not pass made him want to throw up. Well, the Senate has voted down the measure, and Smiley didn’t throw up on-camera. But he did hack up an angry rant on his PBS talk show Monday night.

The host focused on the idea that the overwhelming majority of Americans favor expanded background checks: "If there are polls and studies and surveys that show – and I’ve seen them, so I know this is true. If there are polls and studies and surveys that show that 90 percent of the American people want – or would have wanted, still want – some sort of background check, it raises the question how the president lost on this issue." [Video below. MP3 audio here.]

NewsBusters reported Sunday the media's chorus to silence Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tx.) is growing louder.

As fate would have it, at roughly the same time, David Brooks was sitting down for a chat with PBS’s Jeff Greenfield at the 92nd Street Y during which the New York Times columnist said, “It doesn’t help that [Cruz] has a face that looks a little like Joe McCarthy” (video follows with transcript and commentary):

After more than a month of silence, PBS finally covered the murder trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell on Monday’s NewsHour. Considering that all other major news outlets have barely given Gosnell a mention, if they mentioned him at all, it was refreshing to see PBS devote a full seven-minute story to the gruesome abortionist (even if that story came at the very end of the broadcast). However, there was still a stench of disingenuousness in the air as the PBS journalists subtly dismissed the notion that the trial has not received sufficient media coverage up until now.

Anchor Jeffrey Brown introduced the story as “the murder trial of an abortion provider that has captured national attention.” But if the trial has captured national attention, why has PBS waited until now to mention it? Why have we seen nothing more than a trickle of coverage from other major national news outlets? The story might have rightfully captured national attention from the pro-life crowd, but the liberal commercial broadcast media, which favors abortion, has been unwilling to give it national attention. [Video below. MP3 audio here.]