Fox News Channel

Appearing on NBC's Chris Matthews Show on Sunday, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius initially dismissed the Benghazi terrorist attack as being "Fox News's super-story," with left-wing host Matthews agreeing: "This is a big Fox story." Fellow Post columnist Kathleen Parker called out Ignatius: "I know Fox has been covering it, but, you know, that doesn't mean it's wrong." Ignatius acknowledged: "It doesn't mean it's wrong." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Parker, who prompted discussion of the topic, told Matthews: "I knew you were going to roll your eyes on this, but I think it makes you look good to at least mention it on your show." Matthews replied: "David's also rolling his eyes." Ignatius denied the charge, declaring: "No, I think this is, Benghazi is a serious story." Parker prodded him: "Could you say that a little louder, please?" Ignatius reiterated: "Benghazi is a serious story."

What better place is there, really, to corner news executives about media bias than the White House Correspondents Association Dinner? That's what Fox News producer Jesse Watters of The O'Reilly Factor had in mind when he headed out with camera and microphone to the "nerd prom" this past Saturday.

Even though there's copious amounts of adult beverages at the WHCA dinner, it seems in vino veritas doesn't hold when it comes to media executives copping to their biases. Some simply denied the obvious while others were visibly agitated at the very premise of the question. [Video below. MP3 audio here.]

All three network newscasts on Monday and Tuesday ignored the shocking assertions made by a whistleblower who told Fox News that special forces could have responded to the 2012 terrorist attack on Benghazi. He also claimed that the United States knows who perpetrated last year's assault on the U.S. embassy. Fox News's Adam Housley interviewed a man he described as a "special ops member who watched as the deadly attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi unfolded."

On Tuesday's Special Report, Housley claimed, "However, multiple sources tell Fox News that the U.S. has identified the mastermind of the Benghazi attack who was still in Libya and walks free." [See video below. MP3 audio here.] The whistleblower insisted the reason the Obama administration hasn't acted is because "we basically don't want to upset anybody." The operative flat-out declared, "We have all the capability, all the training, all the capacity to kill and capture that only terrorist involved with the specific events of 9/11 and Ambassador Stevens' death." Yet, ABC, CBS and NBC have, thus far, ignored the story.

For the first time in over two years, the farce of a cable news network known as MSNBC dropped to third place in total viewers and primetime in April being beaten by the long-suffering CNN and of course Fox News at the top.

As TVNewser reported Tuesday, despite April being a heavy news month with disasters in Boston and West Texas, MSNBC viewership was actually down from April 2012:

As part of the Fox News Channel's coverage of the dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum in Texas on Thursday, Dana Perino, co-host of the channel's “The Five” weekday program and a White House press secretary for the 43rd president, interviewed her former boss “not to break any news here” but for viewers to meet and get to know him “as I do.”

That seven-minute discussion immediately drew fire from Howard Kurtz of CNN and the liberal Daily Beast website. He asked on the Tweeter social site whether the softball interview might have made a “mockery” of Fox's coverage of the event.

NewsBusters readers know Ellen Ratner as the perilously liberal news analyst typically offering the left-wing views on Fox News Watch.

On Thursday, Ratner published an article titled "George W. Bush Has Saved More Lives Than Any American President" that is guaranteed to shock the heck out of you as it angers folks on her side of the aisle:

If NBC executives refuse to condemn the extreme rhetoric spewing from the mouths of their MSNBC hosts, at least Fox News will.  Speaking on April 25, Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly chastised Comcast for allowing NBC News to hire someone like Alex Wagner to host her own daytime show on MSNBC.

Appearing on April 24, Alex Wagner disgustingly commented that, “I think that Krauthammer and O’Reilly going after the president and saying he’s not being tough enough on Muslims smells a little bit like a precursor to is the president actually secretly a Muslim.”  [See video after jump.  MP3 audio here.]

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough likes to call himself a “true conservative” on his daily MSNBC show Morning Joe, yet his recent flip-flop on Second Amendment rights makes him anything but a conservative. He’s a typical MSNBC “demagogue,” NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell declared on April 25 as he and Fox News anchor Sean Hannity chastised the MSNBC host. 

In their weekly “Media Mash” segment, the Media Research Center president and the Fox News host went through numerous examples of Scarborough’s bombastic and hostile language towards conservatives, from guns to the recent CPAC conference. After Scarborough smeared that the NRA has made millions of dollars on the Newtown shooting, Bozell called Scarborough’s commentary “radical kook stuff” akin to what you hear from “Occupy Wall Street.” 

Hannity and Bozell proceeded to hammer Scarborough for flip-flopping over gun control, going from a strong supporter of the Second Amendment, to a gun-control proponent. Bozell called Scarborough’s harsh language, “bomb throwing of the worst rhetorical kind and personal insults. Now, he's aiming them against people who supported exactly what he supported.” The two concluded by counseling Scarborough to, “never call yourself a conservative again.” [Watch the full “Media Mash” segment below the page break.] 

Ultra-liberal MSNBC host Alex Wagner may have hit a new low on the Wednesday edition of her program, Now.  Discussing the response to the Boston bombing, Wagner absurdly hinted that Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly and Charles Krauthammer's criticism of Barack Obama are "a precursor" to saying that "the president [is] actually secretly a Muslim." 

Speaking directly to Politico’s Maggie Haberman, who as of today appears to be suffering from Fort Hood amnesia, Wagner railed against Fox News and conservatives who call for more active surveillance of potential terrorists.   [See video after jump.  MP3 audio here.]

For years, NewsBusters has argued that MSNBC is not a news network.

Americans appear to agree, for last week as our nation was rocked by bombings in Boston and a fertilizer plant explosion near Waco, Texas, relatively few citizens turned to MSNBC for information about these horrific events.

While discussing the ongoing manhunt for the second suspect behind the bombing of the Boston Marathon, Chris Wallace -- the host of Fox News Sunday -- linked the Monday terrorist attack with the debate on gun rights currently going on across the country.

Pointing to the fact that most of the region is in a tight lockdown due to the search for 26-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Wallace asked how many people in the area “do you think, might like a gun to be able to protect themselves and defend their homes?”

Brian Stelter, media reporter for the New York Times, foisted his peculiar news judgment on Fox News, weighing President Obama's petulant remarks after the defeat of his gun control plans as more newsworthy than a fire at a Texas fertilizer plant that has killed at least 12 people and injured up to 200.

Stelter also sounded offended that Fox cut off Obama's live Rose Garden remarks, in his piece on the front of Friday's Business section: "At Fox News, Less Attention Paid to Gun Debate Than Elsewhere."

On Thursday night, the Whitman-Walker Health Clinic will hold its annual “Be The Care” fundraiser honoring lesbian Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) with its “Partner for Life” award. Once again this year, journalists don't seem to think supporting this is a conflict of interest.

This liberal-Democrat event is being co-chaired by former Washington Post reporter Ceci Connolly, and she and her husband, current Post reporter Manuel Roig-Franzia (whose recent book targeted Sen. Marco Rubio) are “presenting hosts.” So is Fox News host Greta Van Susteren. That title goes to people donating $2500 to this activist group.

With all the buzz surrounding Jeff Zucker taking over the reins at CNN, it appears to be sister station HLN making a ratings move.

In the week ended April 12, HLN - formerly known as CNN Headline News - bested both CNN and MSNBC in total viewers and in the all important demographic aged 25 to 54.

One of the more bizarre memes propagated by the proabort left about the trial of Kermit Gosnell, who "faces 43 criminal counts, including eight counts of murder in the death of one patient, Karnamaya Monger, and seven newborn infants," is that Fox News has been almost as negligent in covering the story and the trial as the Big Three broadcast networks, and that conservative media in general have also mostly ignored the story.

Through Monday evening, April 8, the Media Research Center's Matt Philbin noted that Gosnell's trial "has received exactly zero seconds of airtime on the broadcast networks." In a pathetic attempt at a response on Friday, Salon's Alex Seitz-Wald and several others are trying to claim that "conservative" outlets have also virtually ignored the trial. Seitz-Wald's own text shows that his argument is weak, as seen in excerpts following the jump.

In a USA Today column Thursday evening, liberal Fox News political analyst Kirsten Powers took the establishment press to task for its failure to give more than cursory attention to the trial of Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell. Life News reminded its readers today that Gosnell "faces 43 criminal counts, including eight counts of murder in the death of one patient, Karnamaya Monger, and seven newborn infants." It excerpted an Associated Press story earlier today which may be a harbinger of a long overdue change in the amount and scope of trial coverage. We'll see.

If there's a change, it may partially be because of sharp criticisms leveled by Powers (links are in original; bolds are mine):

As NewsBusters documented Monday, the media have been largely ignoring the plight of Fox News reporter Jana Winter who may end up going to jail for maintaining the secrecy of her sources on a report concerning Aurora, Colorado, shooter James Holmes.

Former New York Times reporter Judy Miller - who spent 85 days in jail in 2005 for withholding her source regarding the Valerie Plame affair - told NewsMaxTV's Steve Malzberg Monday, "If this were CNN or if this were the New York Times, yeah, I think it’s almost certain that there would have been more coverage and more publicity than there’s been to date" (video follows with transcript and absolutely no need for additional commentary):

A Fox News reporter faces jail time for not giving up her sources in a story on the Aurora shooting, but CNN host Jake Tapper is the only anchor or reporter at the network to mention her plight. Fox News has reported on it, along with various online outlets; the networks have been silent. MSNBC's Joe Scarborough brought it up on Monday's Morning Joe.

Tapper made the story part of the "Buried Lead" segment on his Monday show, "stories we don't think are getting enough attention." It certainly hasn't piqued the curiosity of anyone else at CNN, meriting only a CNN.com piece and no other mentions on air. "Where is the public outrage about this type of thing?" Tapper asked. "Does the public not understand or see us as a check on people in power?"

Fox News reporter Jana Winter may serve six months in jail for refusing to disclose to a court two anonymous sources from a story she broke on July 25, 2012, related to alleged Aurora, Colorado theater shooter James Holmes.

Mackenzie Weinger of Politico has the details and notes that, at least thus far, it seems only Fox News has shown concern over a journalist being squeezed to break the confidence of her sources (emphases mine):

As NewsBusters reported, MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Monday actually said, “Racism is the belief that one race - whites - should rule all others.”

Former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain responded to this nonsense on Fox News's Hannity Tuesday stating, "It's laughable what Chris Matthews is saying...Maybe he doesn't have enough black friends who's telling him the truth" (video follows with transcript and absolutely no need for additional commentary):

While most people have never heard of Roger Ailes, they have heard of his famous creation, the Fox News Channel. As basically the sole national mainstream news entity which is not operated on a left-of-center paradigm, Fox News has become almost public enemy number-one to the far left. For many of today’s illiberal liberals, the mere existence of Fox News is enough to induce spittle-flecked rants calling for its forceful closure by the government.

The sheer hatred leveled against Ailes and Fox News was why I was very interested to interview Zev Chafets, about his new biography, Roger Ailes Off Camera.

Civil rights attorney and talk radio host Leo Terrell got into quite a heated exchange with Sean Hannity Monday evening.

During a segment about the double standard by which African-American conservatives and liberals are treated by the media, Terrell called Dr. Ben Carson Hannity's "puppet" telling his host, "You created a monster" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

While Jim Carrey was calling gun owners "motherf--kers," Jason Biggs spent Holy Week attacking the Pope.

The Five's Greg Gutfeld took them both on Friday marvelously saying, "Our country is great because washed up comics have the right to suck" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

MSNBC’s Toure Neblett last weekend mocked Dr. Benjamin Carson as a token “black friend” to Republicans admired only to “assuage their guilt” for past racial indiscretions.

On Fox News’s America Live Tuesday, Carson struck back at his liberal media critics saying that he’s no “Uncle Tom” (video follows with transcript and absolutely no need for additional commentary):