US News

US News’s Zuckerman: I Don't Give to Politicians; Records Show He Has a Dozen Times

By Jeff Poor | May 9, 2008 - 14:48 ET

It's not unusual for journalists to attempt to distance themselves from the appearance of political ties, especially when trying not to be perceived as biased. But saying you do and actually doing are two separate things.

U.S. News & World Report Editor-in-Chief and chairman of Boston Properties (NYSE:BXP) Mort Zuckerman was asked about donating money to Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton's fading campaign by Huffington Post blogger and MSNBC "Morning Joe" regular John Ridley on the May 9 "Morning Joe."

"I wish I could make a contribution, but I'm in the world of journalism and I can't, but thank you for the offer," Zuckerman said.

U.S. News Sees 'Catastrophe' on Israel's 60th Anniversary

By Ken Shepherd | May 1, 2008 - 11:31 ET

The State of Israel turns 60 years old this May, but rather than highlighting the nation's survival in a hostile region over six decades, U.S. News & World Report aimed to focus on discontent from Israeli Arabs, and to suggest that Israel's sovereignty was in and of itself the cause of "six ensuing decades of bloody conflicts."

"On the Eve of Israel's 60th Birthday, Little Cheer Among Its Arab Citizens," declares the headline for Larry Derfner's April 30 story.

Derfner explained how many Israeli Arabs commemorate May 14, Israel's Independence Day, as Nakba, or the "Day of Catastrophe" (emphasis mine):

Obama Joined Wright's Church As a Political Maneuver?

By Tim Graham | April 17, 2008 - 20:42 ET

One reason why many liberals think the Jeremiah Wright issue is a distraction is their belief that Obama's reverence for Wright is limited, a mere vestige of a past strategy. They assume it's largely political gamesmanship. Joining Wright's church was a way to avoid being charged as too "white" and a way to build a political base. U.S. News & World Report political writer Kenneth T. Walsh certainly forwarded this theory in a story on how Obama learned from "Chicago's Presidential Classroom":

Obama also saw firsthand the central role that African-American churches played in the black community, providing solace, pride, and the motivation to persevere against adversity. He got to know Wright, the bombastic and charismatic pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ—whose angry sermons, widely perceived as anti-American and antiwhite, got Obama's presidential campaign into deep trouble a few weeks ago.

New Special Report: Apostles of Atheism

By Kristen Fyfe | March 25, 2008 - 16:43 ET

In all the brouhaha last week over the incendiary comments made by Barack Obama's pastor the media seemed to forget to partake in their traditional Holy Week Christian-bashing excercise.  There were a few entries in the "Easter Hit Parade," like the Comedy Central show "Root of All Evil" which my boss, Brent Bozell, wrote about in a column recently, and an episode of "Law and Order" which featured another Christian-stones-someone storyline.

I suppose it's good news that there was less faith flagellation courtesy of the liberal media, and yet at the same time it's sad that I was expecting to find it at Easter time.  But the fact remains that Christmas and Easter are generally times when the media attacks on Christians are more pronounced.

For atheists it's a different story.

Are Media Right About a Lower Dollar Causing Higher Oil Prices?

By Noel Sheppard | March 22, 2008 - 13:18 ET

A fairly common media meme during the past year or so has been that the continually declining value of the dollar is driving up oil and gas prices (image courtesy Slate).

In the past three months alone, there have been over 100 stories involving this very subject, including this March 10 piece from U.S. News & World Report entitled "Why Gas Prices Rise as the Dollar Falls (emphasis added):

Here's one of those complex economic truisms the financial press assumes everybody understands: A big reason oil and gas prices are hitting record highs is that the dollar is hitting record lows.

The beauty of this "truism" is that it allows media outlets to blame oil and gas price rises on the Bush administration, as everybody knows that the lower dollar is all their fault (wink, wink...nudge, nudge).

Of course, an examination of oil and Dollar Index charts does show an inverse correlation, meaning that as oil prices rise, the dollar drops and vice versa (charts provided by TradingCharts.com):

Jesse Jackson: Obama's Grandmother?

By Mark Finkelstein | March 18, 2008 - 16:56 ET

Playing the moral equivalence card in his speech this morning, Barack Obama said this:

I can no more disown [Rev. Wright] than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

Which sent me scurrying to Google for the quote I was sure I remembered. And sure enough:

There is nothing more painful to me ... than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery, then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved. -- the Reverend Jesse Jackson, as quoted in US News, 3/10/96

The Audacity of Silence About Tony Rezko

By Tim Graham | March 4, 2008 - 08:22 ET

Jury selection began Monday in Chicago in the trial of Syrian-born businessman Antoin "Tony" Rezko, a major supporter of Barack Obama. Two days before the 2006 elections in which Democrats won by running against a "culture of corruption," Chicago newspapers revealed that Obama purchased a home in the summer of 2005 for $1.6 million, but to complete the deal, he would need to buy an adjoining parcel for $625,000. Instead, Mrs. Rezko bought the parcel, and they closed on the properties on the same day. Rezko was already under federal investigation for kickback schemes.

To a political opponent, this might resemble a lobbyist’s sweetheart deal like the one that started Rep. Duke Cunningham’s political decline, where a lobbyist paid $700,000 more for Cunningham’s home than his own sale price months later. But the national media are anything but opponents of Obama’s. An MRC analysis shows that despite Obama’s high national profile as a Democratic symbol of hope, network TV news and the national news magazines have done a dreadful job of telling the Rezko story, and have struggled not to repeat it.

U.S. News: 2004's Swift Boat Vets One of ‘Dirtiest Campaigns Ever’

By Tim Graham | January 25, 2008 - 16:32 ET

In an issue dominated by rehashing early and modern American campaign history, U.S. News & World Report’s January 28/February 4 issue devoted sympathetic pages to the losing campaigns of two Massachusetts liberals, John Kerry and Michael Dukakis. The cover promised stories on "The Dirtiest Campaigns Ever," and inside the "Down & Dirty" section included reporter Danielle Knight’s story charging the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth made allegations about Kerry’s medals had "little or no merit," according to...The New York Times. In an interview with reporter Bret Schulte, Dukakis claimed that it’s all his fault we’re under the worst administration he’s ever lived under, since he failed to beat "old man" Bush in 1988, but he claimed he was the victim of negative ads that he said he failed to rebut.

U.S. News & World Report Editor Compares Credit Crisis to the Great Depression

By Jeff Poor | January 21, 2008 - 18:06 ET

It's no longer enough to say the economy is heading into or already is in a recession. Invoking the memory of the Great Depression has become the latest way to dramatize the economic turmoil caused by the credit markets.

"[I] think we are facing the worst financial crunch and crisis since the Great Depression," Mort Zuckerman, editor-in-chief of U.S. News & World Report, said on the January 20 "McLaughlin Group."

Zuckerman told viewers we're heading into uncharted territory with this current credit freeze-up.

"You have the entire banking system now that is virtually frozen. And there are, not just this subprime mortgage thing, there are other things called credit default swaps where they will lose as much money, $250 billion on. The banks are frozen. They are not making loans because they have such huge debts that they have to take on to their balance sheets and nobody knows how to deal with that," he continued.

CNN's Gergen: Romney 'Very Dangerous' on Climate Change

By Rich Noyes | January 15, 2008 - 12:38 ET

CNN senior political analyst (and U.S. News & World Report editor-at-large) David Gergen scolded GOP candidate Mitt Romney on Monday’s Anderson Cooper 360 for daring to suggest that the health of the American economy is as important as fighting climate change. Gergen likened that to the "divisive" debate on race among Democratic candidates and called it a “very dangerous” argument for Republicans to make: “If Romney wins, and that becomes the message of the Republican Party, we are going to have two huge clashes in this country between needs on the economy vs. needs to deal with climate change. And it’s a very dangerous place for the Republican Party to go.”

Romney’s chief rival in today’s Michigan primary, Arizona Senator John McCain, has consistently pushed the liberal side of the climate change debate. In a speech in Kalamazoo yesterday, McCain sounded a lot like Al Gore: “I believe there's scientific evidence that drastic things are happening to our planet. If I'm wrong and we move ahead with green technology, the only downside is leaving a cleaner world for our children.”

Instead of scolding McCain for embracing a liberal position in a Republican primary, Gergen faulted Romney for not following suit. Because of his past service in the Reagan and Ford administrations, Gergen is often cast as the conservative counter-balance in roundtables; last night, for example, he appeared with reporter Candy Crowley and liberal CNN contributor Roland Martin. But with Gergen (who also worked for Bill Clinton) making liberal points, too, there’s no conservative to offer an alternative opinion.

Shocker: Former Clinton-boosting U.S. Newser Takes Dem PR Job

By Tim Graham | October 31, 2007 - 23:13 ET

Back in the days of our MediaWatch newsletter, we used to have a feature called "Revolving Door" to note reporters swapping their jobs for political appointments or political appointees swapping their jobs for reporting gigs. (See the NB Revolving Door topic for more recent updates.) The Minneapolis Star Tribune announced that its editorial writer Dave Hage is leaving "to become communications director for first-term Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. Hage, 52, will take over Klobuchar's fledgling press operation," which has already lost its top press aide. Hage, a Minneapolis native, was an economics correspondent for for U.S. News & World Report magazine in Washington from 1991 to 1995, where he drew our attention as he repeatedly attacked Reaganomics and boosted Clintonomics. So the new Democrat job isn’t a shocker.

From our Notable Quotables in March 1993, the myth that health socialism-pushing Clinton would have a "healthy respect" for free enterprise:

Vietnam War Memorial Defaced a Week Ago; Park Service Reluctant to Tab as Vandalism

By Tom Blumer | September 16, 2007 - 10:45 ET

This was first reported at FreeRepublic on Sunday, September 9 at 6:55 PM Pacific Time (3:55 PM Eastern), with follow-up posts here, here, and here.

The incident took place on or some time prior to Friday, September 7. The original Freeper report, with plentiful pictures, states that:

..... It looks like the person who did this walked along The Wall with some type of container, perhaps hidden at their side so that they could squirt the oily substance without being caught in the act.

..... It is unknown who did this to The Wall, and apparently the US Park Police did not know about this damage until today; though the Park Service employees knew about it.

Report: Gender Pay Gap Could Be Affected by College Major Choice

By Pam Meister | June 26, 2007 - 16:47 ET

A story on the US News and World Report website reveals that the reason women are paid less in general may have something to do with what they study in college:

The April release of Behind the Pay Gap by the American Association of University Women Education Foundation reported that one year after college graduation, women working full time earn just 80 percent as much as their male counterparts. The report noted that one potential reason for this difference is that female students are clustered in college majors tied to careers that lead to smaller paychecks. Areas such as education, health, and psychology are dominated by women, while men make up the majority of engineering, physical science, and mathematics majors—occupations that typically pay more.

Bozell Column: Bloomberg, Leader of the Ban

By Brent Bozell | June 20, 2007 - 16:48 ET

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announcing he’s leaving the Republican Party is a little like Madonna announcing she’s leaving the Catholic Church. Was he ever really a paragon of the GOP? Speculation abounds that he’s running for president on the Ross Perot egotistical-billionaire plan, with press reports citing his intention to spend a cool $1 billion of his personal fortune. That will surely create a headwind, but a big part of the wind beneath his wings will be the support he hopes to generate from the national media.

And it’s happening already. Bloomberg’s third-party spoiler ambitions were heavily promoted by two news magazines – a big promotional cover story in Time with fellow RINO Arnold Schwarzenegger titled "The New Action Heroes," and a two-page editorial by U.S. News & World Report owner Mort Zuckerman titled "What to Like About Mike."

This is not to say these magazines believe what America really needs is a successful media magnate in the White House. If they did, they would have done the same publicity favors for Steve Forbes.

‘Reliable Sources’ Panel Gives Three Thumbs Up to Fox News’ GOP Debate

By Noel Sheppard | May 20, 2007 - 12:18 ET

Here’s something you don’t see every day: three media members – two from liberal press outlets – agreeing that Fox News actually did something right.

Yet, that’s what happened on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” Sunday, as host Howard Kurtz and his guests discussed the Republican debates aired Tuesday.

Kurtz began:

Let’s face it, a lot of people expected Fox to go easy on the Republicans. Did that happen?

National Review’s David Frum was first up, and, not so surprisingly, raved:

U.S. News Mag Shocks With 'Is Bush Delusional?' Cover Story

By Tim Graham | May 8, 2007 - 23:22 ET

U.S. News & World Report is traditionally known as the staid sister of Time and Newsweek, so it’s a little shocking to see these harsh words on the cover this week: "Bush’s Last Stand: He’s plagued by a hostile CONGRESS, sinking POLLS, and an unending WAR. IS HE RESOLUTE OR DELUSIONAL?" (Capitals theirs.) The cover story by Kenneth T. Walsh is loaded with Bush-bashing quotes from named and anonymous sources. Walsh began by noting Bush has compared his trials to those of Abraham Lincoln and Harry Truman, and the diagnosis that Bush is mentally ill emerges from DNC chairman Dr. Howard Dean: "This is delusional – comparing yourself to two of our greatest presidents!" Liberal historian Robert Dallek added, "a great majority see him as stubborn and unyielding...And everything he touches turns to dust."

Gloria Borger Calls For ‘Moratorium on Invoking the Memory of Ronald Reagan’

By Noel Sheppard | May 8, 2007 - 14:20 ET

Don’t you find it amazing how liberal media members just can’t stand it whenever former President Ronald Reagan’s name is raised in conversation?

It’s one thing when the currently unhinged host of HBO’s “Real Time” Bill Maher complains that Republicans “love Ronald Reagan in a way that’s just gay.”

But when CBS and U.S. News & World Report’s Gloria Borger calls for a “moratorium on invoking the memory of Ronald Reagan” in a column about the recent Republican presidential debates held at a library named in his honor, this Gipper envy has clearly gotten way out of hand (emphasis added throughout):

U.S. News: Hillary Trying To Be 'More Cautious And Centrist'

By Tim Graham | March 6, 2007 - 09:11 ET

Kenneth Walsh of U.S. News & World Report tried to reassure readers of a new, moderating Hillary in an article titled "Crafting the New Hillary." Is that being done by her handlers, or by the liberal media as well? Walsh reported she was moving to the center, on economics and even on abortion:

Clinton is also trying to come across as more cautious and centrist, if often ambiguous in her policy stands, to reassure independents and conservatives. In an interview with CNBC's Power Lunch last week, she urged Bush to address fundamental problems in the economy, such as soaring foreign debt and massive budget deficits. She called the stock market plunge a "wake-up call" and encouraged the administration to find some "sensible and reasonable" answers.

So Matt Drudge Helped Cause the Market Dive? How About the Original Source?

By Tom Blumer | February 28, 2007 - 09:19 ET

This is stunning, either in its ignorance or its misdirection (bold is mine):

Did the Drudge Report Help Tank the Stock Market?

Here's a headline sure to spook any investor or economist: "Greenspan warns of likely U.S. recession." That was the headline right near the top of the widely surfed Drudge Report yesterday afternoon and this morning, referring to a speech that former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan made the other day via satellite to a business conference in Hong Kong. Many market watchers are blaming those comments– along with a weak durable goods report and the plunge in the Chinese stock market – for today's stock market sell-off. But despite the inflammatory Drudge headline – which, in all fairness, linked to an Associated Press story with that same title – the Maestro was hardly so definitive as Drudge made him out to be. Here is what Greenspan said, according to AP:

Print Editions of Time, Newsweek Covered Edwards Without Vulgar Anti-Christian Specifics

By Tim Graham | February 16, 2007 - 17:50 ET

I'm just getting to the February 19 editions of the news magazines today. The objective? Did they report on the vulgar anti-Christian and anti-Catholic blogs of the now-retired feminist John Edwards bloggers? Not with any specifics. Each papered over the controversy.

Time's Massimo Calabresi devoted his story to the trouble with campaign bloggers and how their "bravado can backfire." In reporting on bloggers for McCain and Hillary as well for Edwards, Calabresi quoted Amanda Marcotte's snarky comments about how guilty the Duke lacrosse players were, but not her giggling over the idea of aborting Jesus after she was filled with the "hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit" so Christians would have to find another "ancient mythology" to excuse their hatred for women: