PBS

Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer on Friday once again demonstrated how liberal media members often make statements about issues they know nothing about.

On this occasion, it was NPR's Nina Totenberg making unfounded claims about past Israel peace offers on PBS's Inside Washington that led Krauthammer to scold, "You’re simply factually wrong" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Senate Democrats on Saturday narrowly passed their first budget in four years.

Appearing on PBS's Inside Washington Friday before the vote, syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer called it "the most appalling document you have ever seen" claiming, "It marches us off a cliff into Greece and perhaps into Cyprus" (video follows with transcript and absolutely no need for additional commentary):

On Thursday’s NewsHour, PBS co-anchor Hari Sreenivasan misled viewers in a story about the latest action in Congress regarding the $984-billion continuing resolution -- a spending bill which will fund federal government operations through September 30, when the current fiscal year ends. Said Sreenivasan: “That spending legislation was necessary because Congress hasn't passed a budget in years.”

While that sentence is true, it's incredibly misleading in that the U.S. House of Representatives has repeatedly passed budget resolutions. It's just that the Democratic-controlled Senate has failed to approve a budget, any budget, in more than three years.

Support for same-sex marriage is on the rise in America, and PBS couldn’t be happier about it. On Tuesday’s NewsHour, the taxpayer-subsidized network ran a story that betrayed more than a hint of elation at the growing acceptance of gay marriage among both politicians and the public. Leading the cheers was co-anchor Gwen Ifill, who narrated the story and moderated the discussion that followed.

At the top of the segment, Ifill promised her viewers that there “ appears to be an evolving sea change on attitudes toward gay marriage.” She then began her package by insisting that, “Steadily and remarkably, public and political support for same-sex marriage is on the rise.”

The liberal media’s attempt to paint Republicans as a party in crisis continues, this time with fresh ammunition from the Republican National Committee’s “Growth & Opportunity Project.” The recently-released report provides a critical review of what went wrong in the 2012 election cycle and how the party can improve its effort to win future elections.

On Monday’s PBS NewsHour, the taxpayer-subsidized PBS network brought on Susan Page from USA Today and Stuart Rothenberg of The Rothenberg Political Report to rip into the Republican Party. Or, as anchor Gwen Ifill put it, the guests were there “to talk about how deep the party's fissures go.” [Video below. MP3 audio here.]

Tavis Smiley invited ultra-liberal Princeton economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman on his show Monday night for a friendly chat about the American economy. Predictably, Krugman used the appearance as an opportunity to bash Republicans, and on a taxpayer-subsidized television program no less.

Krugman and Smiley both complained that the American people have not yet become “sufficiently outraged” over the budget cuts brought by sequestration. Smiley demanded to know why the outrage has not appeared and when it will come. Don’t worry, Krugman reassured him, pain from the sequester will take time to kick in. The outrage will come once people start losing essential government services. [Video below. MP3 audio here.]

Our left-wing media’s somber, mourning coverage of Venezuelan despot Hugo Chavez once again demonstrates the double standard journalists reserve for dictators.

Seven years ago, the left’s greatest South American hate object, Augusto Pinochet, passed away. Never mind how he used free-market reforms to modernize Chile. Never mind that after 15 years of rule, he allowed a national plebiscite to vote against him, and he stepped down peacefully. The left-wing outrage pulsed on the front pages.

Former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick (D) was convicted yesterday on 24 separate federal corruption charges, which could cost him up to 20 years in prison. However, ABC, CBS, and NBC could not be bothered to even mention the conviction of this disgraced ex-mayor of a major, blighted American city on their nightly news programs.

Perhaps they were busy with what are clearly weightier matters. Monday’s NBC Nightly News, for example, found time to mention Justin Timberlake’s recent appearance on Saturday Night Live, the ten worst places to retire in America, and the plight of penguins in Antarctica.

On Friday, the PBS NewsHour featured a story titled "A 'Celebration of Immortality' for Hugo Chavez." This is an odd title for liberals who believe in science and would know when Hugo Chavez has assumed room temperature.

But it grew worse: the segment from former BBC correspondent Matt Frei (now with ITN) actually put Chavez in a "top three" of immortality with Jesus Christ:

Does David Brooks read the news?  I’m sure he does, but with the liberal media failing to report on the spike in gas prices – it’s no surprise that this New York Times Republican thinks the price of oil has gone down...instead of the "worst February on record."

On the PBS Newshour last night, Ruth Marcus filled in for Mark Shields, and said that the new jobs numbers are a positive development.  However, the expiration of the payroll tax holiday will be a drag on the economy.  Brooks chimed in saying, “well, I mean, obviously, there are drags. And I agree. Things are drags. But there are also pluses out there, the lowering of oil, of gas prices, that is obviously a plus. So there is a complex mixture of things.”

This is demonstratively wrong.  As the MRC’s own Julia Seymour of the Business and Media Institute reported last month:

The PBS NewsHour invited Nancy Pelosi on for an interview Thursday night, and the sparks were flying. Sparks of love, that is, between anchor Judy Woodruff and the House minority leader. Woodruff conducted a 10-minute interview of mostly softballs about the salient topics of the day. But one of today’s hottest topics, the sequester, only merited one question from Woodruff - and it wasn’t a query a serious journalist would ask. [Video below. MP3 audio here.]

Woodruff began, “Quick question about the sequester. The White House spent a lot of time, the president did, talking about the dire consequences once the sequester kicked in.” Okay. So far, so good. Now, surely Woodruff is going to ask why the president did an about-face and is now downplaying the sequester’s effects. Or maybe she’ll ask if Mr. Obama’s fearmongering was overblown. Or maybe she’ll even ask Pelosi if the president did everything he could to reach a compromise with Republicans to avert the sequester.

I was flipping channels on Wednesday night when I came across a pledge campaign on D.C. PBS station WHUT (Howard University Television). Travel-show host Rick Steves was doing the usual spiel about how PBS is a “national treasure” that assumes we’re intelligent people.

But then came the usual hustle: Steves said PBS “is a TV station that treats us not like consumers, but like neighbors.” Then for the next five minutes, Steves undermined that by describing all the goodies you could get if you pledged $60 or $160, like DVDs of every travel show Rick Steves has ever made.

Liberal PBS host Tavis Smiley recently became the latest media member to refer to the $85 billion sequester as “austerity.” On his self-titled show Tuesday night, the taxpayer-subsidized Smiley got all frowny while discussing the American economy with former FDIC chairwoman Sheila Bair:

"Since you raised the issue, let me ask how it is, in your mind at least, the notion of austerity, and whatever people in Washington don’t want to call it, that’s exactly what this is. Sequestration’s a big, fancy word. This is austerity masking as a conversation about deficit reduction as far as I’m concerned." [Video below. MP3 audio here.]

As NewsBusters reported earlier, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and MSNBC's Joe Scarborough had quite a heated discussion about the budget, debt, and the economy on PBS's Charlie Rose Monday evening.

Near its conclusion, Scarborough actually scolded Krugman for pompously behaving like a sighing Al Gore (video follows with transcript and commentary):

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and MSNBC's Joe Scarborough had an at times heated discussion about budget deficits, debt, and the economy on PBS's Charlie Rose Monday evening.

At one point Krugman got so rattled by the facts that he actually said Scarborough quoting what he had said in the past was making an ad hominem attack against him (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer on Friday perfectly encapsulated the hysteria the White House is trying to gin up regarding budget sequestration.

Appearing on PBS's Inside Washington, Krauthammer spoke of Biblical plagues that re-appeared Friday telling host Gordon Peterson, "We have sequestered against the Lord, Gordo, and his wrath is great" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

The liberal media’s effort to demonize Sen. Ted Cruz continues. On last Friday’s episode of PBS’s Inside Washington, the mostly left-leaning panel of journalists piled on the criticism of the junior senator from Texas. The attacks were focused on Cruz’s questioning of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel during Hagel’s confirmation battle. Moderator Gordon Peterson presented the topic like this: “The Tea Party activists love this guy for being so aggressive. I’m wondering how this aggression so early in his career plays on in the Senate.”

But according to panelist Evan Thomas, a Politico contributor, Cruz is not merely aggressive; he is dangerous: “You need to watch this guy, because there are a lot of demagogues out there, but not that many who are that smart. He is really, really smart, and that makes him potentially dangerous.” [Video below. MP3 audio here.]
 

Tavis Smiley, PBS’s resident liberal activist, unleashed his anger against the Democratic Party on his talk show last night. In a conversation with California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), Smiley bemoaned the lack of increase in the federal minimum wage in recent years, attacking Democrats from the left: “Why has your party, the Democrats in Washington, the Democrat as president in the White House, why in the first term are they not more aggressive about that?” [Video below. MP3 audio here.]

The taxpayer-subsidized left-wing host was furious that President Obama has lowered his minimum wage demand from $9.50 to $9.00 an hour: “I love the guy, but I keep saying he’s negotiating against himself. He started at $9.50, now he’s down to $9.00, and the debate hasn’t started.” He finished his rant by slamming the entire party once again:

Faux conservative David Brooks of the New York Times used his Friday appearance with Mark Shields on the PBS NewsHour to bash Republicans over sequestration, comparing GOP tactics in dealing with spending to a trite circus act.  Either Mr. Brooks forgot that sequestration was the president’s idea or doesn't care about facts getting in the way of cozying up to his liberal media buddies.  Even liberal Democratic Sen. Max Baucus (Montana) admitted to that, and it’s explicitly mentioned that sequestration was the White House’s idea in Bob Woodward’s new book about the 2011 debt ceiling fiasco.  

Shields piggybacked off of Brooks’ remarks, and said that the GOP’s fallback position is blaming the president, as if Obama is blameless in this dismal situation.

Another liberal media member has broken ranks and pointed the finger of blame for the looming budget sequester on Barack Obama.

After the Washington Post's Bob Woodward correctly wrote Friday that sequestration was indeed the Obama administration's idea in 2011, former Newsweek editor Evan Thomas hours later said on PBS's Inside Washington this whole standoff is "a failure of leadership by the White House...[Obama's] just playing politics" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Thursday night’s episode of PBS’s Charlie Rose proved that left-wing smear jobs can come in many forms - including poetry. The New Yorker’s Calvin Trillin stopped by the show to chat about his latest book, an account of the 2012 presidential election told in comic verse. Trillin shared a few of his poems with Rose, including this one:
 

I did a poem after the election that was called "Republican Soul-Searching." Says, "we're searching our souls and we're wondering why, we got beat so badly our rivals are gloating. It’s obvious now where our campaign went wrong, we should have prevented more people from voting." I mean, that was their strategy. [Video below. MP3 audio here.]

On January 25, the PBS NewsHour gave the annual “March for Life” a perfunctory 56-word news brief. But on Monday night, the leftist protests against the proposed Keystone XL pipeline from Canada drew a full story about nine times that long.

Anchor Judy Woodruff somehow ignored the large crowds of Earth Day 1970, Earth Day 1990 (stood there myself), and Earth Day 2000 to echo the Left: “Thousands of people marched on the National Mall in Washington yesterday, braving a cold winter wind to take part in what organizers called the biggest climate rally in U.S. history.” If that wasn’t weird enough, protest organizer Bill McKibben announced the Arctic melted last year:

"The longest suicide note in the world is being written by the Republicans if they don't support immigration reform. If they don't revamp their image on it, they are truly drinking the potion that’s going to make them disappear."

So said PBS's Mark Shields on Inside Washington Friday (video follows with transcript):

Tony Kushner, the screenwriter behind the Oscar nominated movie 'Lincoln,' compared Barack Obama to the 16th president and called the defeat of Mitt Romney a "rejection" of the "Reagan era ideology" that leads to a "frightening" path of "psychotic individualism."

Appearing on Thursday's edition of PBS's Charlie Rose show the openly gay playwright called Obama's evolution on same-sex marriage "Lincolnian" and roasted Ronald Reagan, Romney and the Tea Party: (Video after the jump) 

Supposedly conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks exposed more of his liberal stripes on Tuesday, telling the Republican Party it needs to rethink its core message. Appearing on PBS’s post-State of the Union coverage, Brooks said he was disappointed with the response delivered by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) because it delivered the typical message of traditional conservative principles.

He continued: [Video after the jump. MP3 audio here.]

Allegations of shady campaign contributors and procurement of prostitutes are usually the ingredients of a political scandal that send the media into a feeding frenzy – unless, of course, the figure involved is a Democrat.

When news broke that the FBI opened an inquiry into New Jersey Democratic Senator Bob Menendez’s jaunts (that may have included solicitation of prostitutes) to the Dominican Republic with a longtime campaign contributor, the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) networks responded with barely a murmur.

Mort Zuckerman really schooled Eleanor Clift on PBS's McLaughlin Group Friday.

After Clift commented that if she closed her eyes during House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's (R-Va.) speech to the American Enterprise Institute last week, she "would have thought it was Barack Obama," Zuckerman marvelously fired back, "Eleanor, if it had been Barack Obama, you would have supported everything he said" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Throughout her tenure at Newsweek, Eleanor Clift has been one of the national media's most consistently dovish, anti-war figures.

On Friday, while appearing on PBS's McLaughlin Group, Clift twice said drones "are a blessing" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Conservative author Ann Coulter has strongly responded to PBS's Mark Shields calling her "The Marie Antoinette of the Conservative press corps."

Shields made this remark on PBS's Inside Washington Friday in the middle of a discussion about Sen. Marco Rubio's (R-Fl.) recent views regarding immigration reform (video follows with transcript and commentary):