Fox News Channel

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform convened for a hearing on Wednesday at 12 p.m. EDT to delve into the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

Detailed accounts were heard, revelatory statements were made, but MSNBC's noon time program Now with Alex Wagner was too busy criticizing everything Mitt Romney has said over the last few years to even acknowledge what was transpiring, much less dip in to cover the hearing itself.

Since MRC president Brent Bozell was busy celebrating at the MRC's 25th Anniversary Gala on Thursday night, Fox News asked him to appear for a "Media Mash" segment on Friday night's Hannity. Bozell and Sean Hannity focused mostly on the emerging scandal of  Team Obama's lies about the attacks at the Benghazi consulate that killed four Americans. As we've reported, the networks have been very slow off the mark on this one. ABC's Jake Tapper showed spokesman Jay Carney pooh-poohing it was a “pre-planned attack," which now looks like a lie. Networks didn't want to underline the government knew within 24 hours it was a terrorist attack.

Bozell asked, "Who shows up to a demonstration with rocket-propelled grenades?...Where are the press? They should have been doing this two weeks ago!" Hannity lamented, "They’re covering up the death by terrorists of Americans by terrorists!" And "CBS has yet to cover this,” Bozell said. (Video below)

***UPDATE*** [October 2, 11:50 ET]: NBCNews.com has apparently taken down the offenisve cartoon series, but it can still be found here (h/t TVNewser).

In a brazen attack on Fox News, NBCNews.com published a 15-image slideshow compiled by the website's political cartoonist Daryl Cagle ripping the cable channel. One cartoon shows a man sitting in a recliner with a remote as Fox News emanates from an elephant's rear end. In another, Fox was again depicted as an elephant, this time with a pile feces behind it labeled "Secret corporate money."

MediaBistro's TVNewser blog caught the sleazy display on the network news site, with writer Alex Weprin observing: "It is somewhat unusual for a news organization to publish such a sloppy item trashing a competitor."

On September 25, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell was joined by numerous other conservatives in an open letter to ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN executives protesting their blatant bias and noting that they are encouraging Americans to get their news from other, more balanced sources.

The following night, Fox News's Greta Van Susteren referenced the letter in a segment with fellow FNCer Brit Hume, who noted that while every presidential election he's covered he's observed the media's bias against the Republican candidate, that this year is markedly different in the intensity of that bias (watch the video embedded below the page break):

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):

Fox News's Chris Wallace on Sunday asked senior Obama campaign adviser Robert Gibbs an absolutely delicious question about the current White House resident's schedule.

During a Fox News Sunday interview, the host said, "The President has blocked out time to appear on The View on Tuesday. So, he has time for Whoopi Goldberg but he doesn’t have time for world leaders?" (video follows with transcript and absolutely no need for commentary):

"The problem we have in this country is the [pro-Obama] advertising is what goes on in between the commercials" of the liberal media programs that have interviewed the president thus far this year, NewsBusters senior editor Tim Graham complained on the September 19 Your World with Neil Cavuto. The liberal media are in advertising mode for the president's reelection, Graham argued, judging by the way the media fail to hold the president to account for his handling of the "serious global problems that we have" while gushing over how cool his chummy chat with comedian David Letterman was last night.

"We do expect presidential candidates to do some of these lighter shows," Graham conceded, "But what's amazing about is they're not expecting Obama to do a tough show" or a "press conference" even though "our Afghanistan mission is falling apart." [MP3 audio here; video follows page break]

Former New Hampshire governor John Sununu made a marvelous observation about the current hyperventilation going on in the press concerning Mitt Romney's just revealed remarks concerning the 47 percent of Americans that don't pay federal income taxes.

Appearing on Fox News's America Live, Sununu said, "You have a liberal media out there is looking for the tiniest little wart that they can blow up into a giant cancer" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Appearing on Fox News's America Live on Thursday, Daily Beast columnist and Democratic pundit Kirsten Powers ripped the liberal media for expressing more outrage over Mitt Romney's reaction to Tuesday's embassy attacks, than toward the attackers themselves: "I mean, it is just absolutely utterly insane the way that they have elevated this." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Powers worried that the blatant bias had "overshadowed any kind of outrage that you would see over the fact that you have Islamic flags being hoisted over American embassies, the fact that an American ambassador is dead."

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):

Conservative author Ann Coulter on Wednesday called the media out for its attacks on Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's criticism of Barack Obama's response to Tuesday's anti-American hostilities in Egypt and Libya.

Appearing on Fox News's Hannity, Coulter said, "You know that Romney’s statement was devastating to President Obama because the media is screaming bloody murder" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On the eleventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the horrendously liberal website Salon published a piece with the truly absurd headline, "Fox News’ War on Muslims: Roger Ailes, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity have stoked Islamophobia -- and encouraged right-wing ignorance."

The contents - excerpted from Nathan Lean's book “The Islamophobia Industry: How the Right Manufactures Fear of Muslims” - were stocked with misinformation about America's leading cable news channel:

Earlier today, an angry Cairo mob stormed the U.S. embassy, ripped down the American flag, and flew in its place a black al Qaeda banner. The mob is reportedly angered about a documentary film that supposedly offends Muslim religious sensibilities with critiques of the Prophet Muhammad.

While CNN and Fox News have both mentioned the developing story, MSNBC has not as of the time of this publication, a review of our DVR systems shows.

After offending religious Americans by appearing to boo God, the Democratic National Convention had the top ranking Catholic official in the country perform the closing Benediction Thursday night. Cardinal Timothy Dolan did the same for the Republicans last week in Tampa Bay, but those delegates didn’t seem to have a problem with a party platform that included God and Jerusalem.

The only networks respectful enough to show the prayer in its entirety without interruption was Fox News, Fox Business and C-SPAN. ABC, CNN, and PBS kept it in background while talking over it. MSNBC completely ignored it, cutting the audio feed to let their pundits share their opinions without distraction. CBS and NBC returned to local news affiliates as soon as he began.  

[See video below.  MP3 audio here.]

On the final day of last week's Republican National Convention in Tampa, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky sat down with NewsBusters to discuss amongst other things our favorite topic - liberal media bias.

In the course of our lengthy discussion, McConnell addressed Chris Matthews's claim that Republicans are being racist when they accuse President Obama of engaging in Chicago-style politics (video follows with transcript, Matthews section at minute 8:30):

New York Times "TV Watch" columnist Alessandra Stanley focused Friday on MSNBC's embarrassingly partisan coverage of the Republican National Convention and tried to contrast it with the struggle of NBC's more objective reporters to remain above the fray: "MSNBC, Arch Counterprogramming to Fox." The online head was more interesting: "How MSNBC Became Fox’s Liberal Evil Twin." Stanley even accused MSNBC host Chris Matthews of "thuggish" behavior in an interview with a female Republican governor.

But do NBC reporters Andrea Mitchell and Chuck Todd (or anchor Brian Williams) really "keep their opinions to themselves" as Stanley claims? Hardly. In fact, they fit in quite well with the liberal partisans at MSNBC.

Jim Pinkerton of Fox News Watch says the MSM has a problem: groups like NewsBusters are paying attention and "nailing them" when they let their liberal bias show.

Pinkerton made his comment in an interview with NewsBusters at the RNC today.  The subject was a story NewsBusters broke this morning regarding Yahoo's Washington bureau chief David Chalian, who was caught on a hot mike saying that Mitt and Ann Romney were "happy to have a party with black people drowning."  Chalian was fired not long after the NewsBusters story broke. View the Pinkerton video after the break.

Just like his counterparts at MSNBC on Tuesday night, Fox News Channel political analyst Juan Williams thought it fit to continue forwarding the left's main attack on Ann Romney - that she just can't relate the average American woman. Minutes after Mrs. Romney's RNC speech, Williams bluntly remarked that she "looked to me like a corporate wife...[T]he stories she told about struggles – ah, it's hard for me to believe. I mean, she's a very rich woman. And I know that, and America knows that." [audio available here; video below the jump]

When anchor Megyn Kelly asked the former NPR personality what he meant by this loaded term, Williams claimed that Mrs. Romney wasn't "speaking, I think, for the tremendous number of single women in this country or married women...she did not convince me that, you know what? I understand the struggles of American women in general."

Geraldo Rivera on Monday praised the fairness of Fox News and NewsBusters while not being so kind about how the mainstream media will cover the Republican National Convention in Tampa.

Speaking with NewsBusters about how the press will report the event, Rivera said, "We’ll be fair, you’ll be fair – we’ll leave them to their own just deserts" (video follows with commentary):

On Saturday's Fox News Watch, as the panel discussed the substantial attention the media devoted to Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin's claim that forcible rape victims rarely become pregnant as opposed to Vice President Joe Biden's "chains" gaffe, two recent studies by the Media Research Center -- parent organization to NewsBusters -- were cited. Host Jon Scott cited MRC analyst Scott Whitlock's study from Tuesday:

"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):

On Saturday's Fox News Watch, as the group discussed the media's tepid attention to Vice President Joe Biden's "chains" gaffe, panel member and left-leaning FNC analyst Kirsten Powers asserted that "There is a glaring media standard, no question about it."

After noting that there was a similar double standard in Biden and Sarah Palin's treatment during the 2008 campaign, Powers complained:

Syndicated columnist Cal Thomas made a statement on Saturday's Fox News Watch that is guaranteed to raise a few eyebrows.

"An African-American president can divide racially in this country - as I believe this one has done quite effectively - and he gets a free pass from the media" (video follows with transcript):