Fox & Friends

On Tuesday's Fox & Friends, Fox News contributor and Emmy-winning journalist Juan Williams accused the Obama Justice Department of having "criminalized journalism" by investigating Fox News correspondent James Rosen. Williams claimed that such probing by the administration “makes it difficult for journalists to do business” and posed the question, “How do you do journalism if you are treated as a criminal for asking for information?” [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

This revelation, of course, comes close on the heels of the DOJ seizing phone and email records of several Associated Press employees during a leak investigation concerning a CIA operation to foil a terror bomb plot. However, in the Rosen case, the Justice Department has “specifically gone after Rosen and Fox as co-conspirators in the case,” according to Williams, whereas “there is no such listing of AP as a co-conspirator.” In all his years of reporting, Williams said that this particular case against Rosen “stands out in a bright way to me” because it shows that the administration is trying to criminalize certain types of reporting. 

Conservative talk radio host Laura Ingraham on Tuesday made a marvelous observation about the media firestorm surrounding Dr. Benjamin Carson's speech last week at the National Prayer Breakfast.

Appearing on Fox & Friends, Ingraham said, "We can have celebrities talk about fracking and all sorts of political issues...but the head of pediatric neurosurgery at one of the top hospitals in the world" shouldn't discuss healthcare (video follows with partial transcript and commentary):

As NewsBusters reported in early January, HBO's Bill Maher offered Donald Trump $5 million if he could prove he wasn't spawned by a father that was an orangutan.

On Fox & Friends Monday, Trump announced that he was suing Maher for $5 million for not following through on his offer (video follows with transcript and commentary):

The media's sickening love affair with Hillary Clinton has gone so over the top that Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) took issue with it Thursday.

Discussing the Secretary of State's recent testimony on Capitol Hill with the gang at Fox & Friends, McCain said, "She was called feisty according to the mainstream media. She obviously has an adoring media. She really didn't answer any questions" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On Wednesday morning's edition of “Fox & Friends,” Sen. Orrin Hatch vented his frustration on the way the press has covered the impasse between President Obama and members of Congress as they try to resolve the “fiscal cliff” financial crisis.

Unlike the liberal media who are engaging in a full-scale blackout of the scandal in Libya, Friday’s Fox & Friends engaged in a vigorous debate over the attack on our Embassy in Benghazi. 

Fox News Channel liberal contributor Geraldo Rivera engaged in a full-out shouting match with conservative-leaning co-hosts Steve Doocy and Eric Bolling.  During the back-and-forth, Geraldo’s main argument was thus: [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

**UPDATE** At 2:30 p.m. EDT, MSNBC mentioned the damaging emails for the first time, coupling it with breaking news of an arrest in the attack on our Libyan consulate.   

Following in the footsteps of its sister broadcast network, MSNBC has continued to ignore the shocking revelation that the White House knew on September 11 that the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was under a well-coordinated terrorist attack. 

As NewsBusters’ Matthew Balan noted, NBC's Today was the only broadcast network morning show this to ignore the story altogether, with MSNBC following suit by remaining silent as well throughout the day.  In contrast, both Fox News and CNN have run numerous stories Wednesday morning.

Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham doesn't think the liberal media's bar is very high for Barack Obama to get wildly favorable reviews after Tuesday's upcoming presidential debate with Mitt Romney.

Appearing on Fox & Friends early Tuesday morning, Ingraham said, "He can sit there playing Angry Birds on his iPhone and I think they’ll go, 'Oh wow, masterful performance'" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

In the just published excerpt of Ann Coulter's new book Mugged: Racial Demagoguery From the Seventies to Obama, the conservative author noted the racial double standards of MSNBC commentators such as Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow.

Appearing on Fox News's Fox & Friends Tuesday, Coulter expanded her criticism to Lawrence O'Donnell and HBO's Bill Maher (video follows with transcript):

As NewsBusters reported Wednesday, CBS and NPR reporters were caught on a hot mic plotting to ensure Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney would be asked if he regrets scolding Barack Obama for his response to the recent anti-American hostilities in Egypt and Libya.

On Thursday's Fox & Friends, conservative author Michelle Malkin said the people involved were Obama's "tools' and "stenographers," and that this represented "an underline and exclamation point on the obituary of main stream objective news" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

"The other reason I think Biden’s gaffes aren't that damaging to the president is because the media is so playing a part in this campaign. I think this is going to be the worst media bias we’ve seen since the 1992 election. We can bring back those old bumper stickers. It was 'Annoy the Media - Vote Bush.' Now it’s 'Annoy the Media – Vote Romney.'”

So said conservative author Ann Coulter on Sunday's Fox & Friends Weekend (video follows with transcript and commentary):

In a nasty rant at the end of Thursday's Rock Center on NBC, Nightly News anchor Brian Williams slammed the hosts of FNC's morning show for daring to criticize the uniforms for the U.S. Olympic team: "Trouble on Fox & Friends. It started when the morning show crew mocked the new Ralph Lauren outfits...." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

After playing a clip of Gretchen Carlson being critical of berets being part of the uniform, Williams sneered: "The jingoism continued. Another host wondered why they couldn't wear something more American, like baseball caps or cowboy hats. Until the viewer e-mails started pouring in, reminding them some real Americans, U.S. soldiers, are issued berets."

In the wake of revelations that Chief Justice John Roberts switched his vote on the constitutionality of ObamaCare, former CBS journalist and Fox News contributor Marvin Kalb appeared on Tuesday's Fox & Friends and flat-out rejected the notion that the media influenced the Roberts opinion or that media influence, especially from left-wing networks, has any adverse impact on national politics.
 
Nevertheless, he squeezed in a comment stating that the Obamacare decision was “truly important” in his interview with Gretchen Carlson, and also said it pained him as a old CBS hand to slam CBS reporter Jan Crawford, but that's what he "reluctantly" did.

On Sunday, we pointed out how the New York Times shamelessly plugged MSNBC "wonk prince" Chris Hayes as hot and trendy among young hipsters. The Times should wince now that  Jeff Poor at The Daily Caller dug up the actual ratings to embarrass Times writer Alex Williams for hailing the weekend ratings of Up! With Chris Hayes. It turns out the “Uppers” weren’t as numerous or trending as positively as the Times implied.

On Saturday mornings (8 to 9 am), Hayes is crushed by Fox & Friends Saturday. In the first quarter in all viewers (2-plus), it’s Fox with 1.182 million to MSNBC’s 426,000. In the second quarter to date numbers, it’s even worse: Fox with 1.261 million to MSNBC’s 350,000.

Fox News is taking a lot of heat for broadcasting a four-minute video attacking President Obama on Wednesday's Fox & Friends.

Yet when NewsBusters broke the story that a film mocking Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was created by NBC and aired first on the syndicated Chris Matthews Show and then on MSNBC's Hardball in late February, there was no similar media outrage (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

NewsBusters for days has been strongly admonishing the media for ignoring the recent lawsuit by numerous Catholic entities against the Obama administration for its contraception mandate.

Appearing on Fox & Friends Saturday, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee likened this press boycott to "not covering the 'I Have a Dream' speech by Martin Luther King in 1963. It’s like missing the Roe v. Wade decision and not thinking that’s significant. It’s like somehow missing Brown versus Board of Education" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

According to the hosts of Fox and Friends, a NewsBusters blog is "guaranteed to make liberal heads explode.” On the April 25th program, the FNC anchors praised a NB piece by Noel Sheppard on the Dalai Lama saying he "loved" President George W. Bush.

The comment occurred during an interview with Piers Morgan.  The Fox & Friends hosts marveled at just how much liberals would hate this statement.  [See video below.  MP3 audio here.]

As NewsBusters reported Monday, the ladies of ABC's The View were tremendously sympathetic to Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke's tale of woe and misery having been called a "slut" by conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh.

Yet as Laura Ingraham pointed out on Tuesday's Fox & Friends, her being called a "slut" by MSNBC's Ed Schultz last year was a source of great amusement on The View with Barbara Walters acknowledging to great laughter, "Joy Behar on this program has called me a slut" (videos follow with transcribed highlights and commentary):

Mitt Romney appeared on all six network and cable morning shows on Wednesday and endured repeated liberal attacks about whether he'll be able to "defend" his business background, and even an assertion that a 16 point New Hampshire win was "not a victory." [UPDATED: See video below. MP3 audio here.]

The Republican presidential candidate showed up on CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox News and MSNBC. However, it was CNN's Soledad O'Brien who offered the most transparently partisan attack. Citing DNC Chairman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, O'Brien parroted that this "was not a victory." The "Starting Point" anchor admitted that Wasserman-Schultz's job was to "spin," but continued, "But doesn't she have a point [that]... this is a place [New Hampshire] where you have lived, and that number, while very good, is not 60 percent, or 70 percent?"

In light of the development this weekend that Mitt Romney and Ron Paul were the only two presidential candidates who had enough valid signatures to appear on the Virginia Republican primary ballot on March 6,  the American Spectator's John Fund appeared on Sunday's Fox and Friends on FNC and suggested that Newt Gingrich may yet find a way to secure a spot on the Virginia ballot. (Video below)

Every year, millions of Christians that celebrate the birth of their Savior are faced with the attacks on Christmas - "holiday trees," atheist ad campaigns and even outright blasphemy in mocking nativity scenes. To Christians and conservatives, the evidence is overwhelming. But in recent years, the left and the mainstream media have actively denied that the war even exists.

From the hard left gang of current and former MSNBC personalities to CNN hosts to Huffington Post writers, the watch words have been "fake" and "phony" and "ridiculous." With varying degrees ire, they've blamed Fox News and the "Christian right" for the "manufactured outrage" at attacks on Christmas.

Joe Scarborough on MSNBC's Morning Joe last week claimed that Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace "loathes Mitt Romney."

On Fox & Friends Sunday, Wallace denied this (transcript and commentary follow with video courtesy Johnny Dollar, relevant section at 2:45):

Saturday's Fox News Watch gave attention to a recent study released by the Media Research Center - parent organization to NewsBusters - documenting that the broadcast network morning newscasts gave more friendly treatment to Democratic presidential candidates in 2007 as compared to the GOP presidential field in 2011.

As he introduced the segment, host Jon Scott noted that, not only were questions for Democratic guests posed from a liberal point of view much more often than from a conservative point of view in 2007, but that questions for Republican candidates in 2011 have also been posed from a liberal point of view much more often than from a conservative viewpoint. Scott:

The Washington Post, no conservative paper it, gave front-page coverage today to the latest development in the Solyndra scandal: E-mail records show that the Obama White House urged the solar energy company to postpone layoffs until after the 2010 midterm elections.

"The announcement could have been politically damaging because President Obama and others in the administration had held up Solyndra as a poster child of its clean-energy initiative," Post staffers Carol Leonnig and Joe Stephens noted in the November 16 paper. Sure enough Solyndra publicly announced a round of layoffs on November 3, "immediately following the Nov. 2 vote."

While this development broke yesterday afternoon, ABC, CBS, and NBC have ignored the development in their November 15 evening newscasts as well as their November 16 morning programs.

Wednesday's Fox and Friends on FNC gave attention to the recent confrontation between HBO host and comedian Bill Maher and Elisabeth Hasselbeck, the right-leaning co-host of ABC's The View, as Maher appeared as a guest on the ABC show.

Hasselbeck brought up a tasteless rape joke Maher told earlier in the year on his Real Time show after the sexual assault of CBS correspondent Lara Logan as she reported from Egypt in which he suggested sending Hasselbeck to Egypt.

On Monday's "Fox and Friends," liberal comedian George Lopez all but threw the "Oreo" racial slur at Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain: "The Republicans do know that he's darker than Barack Obama...but whiter on the inside." Lopez also half-jokingly hinted that the Tea Party was racist after host Steve Doocy mentioned Cain had won a Tea Party straw poll: "He wasn't serving the tea, 'cause that's crazy" [audio available here].

Lopez poked fun of the Republican presidential field at the bottom of the 8 am Eastern hour of the Fox News Channel morning show, and began by making fat jokes at the expense of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who is rumored to be considering a presidential run: "Should he run, and should he jump in the pool? Not while I'm in there. Let me get out before he cannonballs everybody out of water."

[Video clip available below the jump]

On the August 19 "Fox & Friends" panel segment, co-host Gretchen Carlson highlighted the Media Research Center's (MRC) "revealing" labeling study comparing broadcast network coverage of the 2007 Democratic primary to the 2011 Republican primary.

Published by MRC Research Director Rich Noyes on Tuesday, the study reviewed the ABC, CBS, and NBC morning and evening news programs from January 1 through July 31, 2011 and found 62 "conservative" tags for Republican candidates, compared to only three "liberal" labels for Democratic candidates running during the same time period in 2007.

"That's a 20-to-1 margin, if you're doing the math with us this morning," remarked Carlson.

[Video follows page break]