Media Business

MSNBC's Chris Matthews is featured in a new "Lean Forward" promo spot [embedded below page break; MP3 audio here] quoting his "hero" Winston Churchill as having asked "Then what are we fighting for?" when his finance minister suggested that the government's budget for the arts would have to cut to aid Britain's war effort.  Matthews used that story as a warning to conservatives that the nation's dire financial straits are no excuse for cutting federal spending on the arts.

But alas, it seems the story is poppycock, as Churchill historian Richard Langworth noted in a March 2009 blog post.

On MSNBC's Ed Show on Monday night, Ed Schultz attacked Mitt Romney for failing to disagree emphatically with a voter who said Obama should be tried for treason. "For all his faults, at least John McCain [in 2008] had the guts to talk down the crazy. Four years later, the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party doesn't have the character or leadership skills to correct conspiracy theories on the road at an event? Romney didn't address the treason accusation at an event until a reporter grilled him about it."

Guess who didn't have the "character or leadership skills" to correct his supporters when they made crazy talk about "treason" in the last presidential election? That would be Barack Obama. Which supporters? You can start with...Keith Olbermann, occupying Ed Schultz's current spot on MSNBC. Check out Olbermann on April 25, 2008, for example, when the treason came from Team Clinton, which was supposedly going to undermine Obama in the fall:

The news Monday of a thwarted al-Qaeda plot to place another explosive device modeled on the "underwear bomb" that failed on Christmas Day 2009 might make a news consumer wonder: What ever happened to that terrorist, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab? On February 16, he was sentenced to life in prison for his attempt at mass murder. Did you miss it? The networks weren't very interested. Only ABC's World News filed a full evening-news report by legal reporter Pierre Thomas, but even that left out Team Obama -- especially Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano claiming "the system worked" when it obviously didn't. Citizens foiled the attack over Detroit, not the government.

NBC never covered the life sentence in the evening. One 67-word brief by Amy Robach on "Today" was all they did. CBS Evening News mentioned it briefly, but here's one full Obama report they did instead, correspondent Norah O'Donnell explaining how White House tourists were "overcome with emotion" when Michelle Obama made a surprise appearance:

One day after the lavish White House Correspondents' Dinner was held in Washington, D.C., former "NBC Nightly News" anchor Tom Brokaw stated that the annual event is diminishing the reputation of the journalists who attend it.

The longtime newsman made the remark to host David Gregory while appearing as a guest on "Meet the Press" the following morning, according to a column written by David Eldridge at the Washington Times on Sunday.

Apple -- the world's most valuable business and an engine of economic growth and personal freedom across the United States and around the world -- is coming under fire because it had the nerve to structure its global business in such a way that saves the company on taxes.

The New York Times has a very lengthy story exploring all of the ways that Apple minimizes its tax bill. The article, entitled "How Apple Sidesteps Billions in Taxes," makes a great effort to tie Apple's strategy, which is legal, to the ongoing budget problems faced by California, where Apple has its global headquarters, and to the federal budget deficit.

In his "The Fix" blog yesterday, Washington Post political reporter Chris Cillizza uncritically furthered a faulty Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) that argues that President Obama has actually received more negative news coverage this political season than the Republican presidential primary contenders. This morning, Post print edition editors excerpted Cillizza's item on page A4, the "Campaign 2012" news page.

While Cillizza noted in his blog post that there are "mitigating factors" in the survey data -- that langauge was cut from the print edition excerpt -- he confidently asserted that "for all the chatter about Obama’s preferential treatment by the media, the data tells a very different story. And the data doesn’t lie." But as my colleague Rich Noyes explained on Monday, the data examined by the study are fundamentally flawed and hence worthless to arrive at a conclusion about the media's judgments of the candidates (emphases mine):

Yesterday the trustees who oversee Social Security announced that "the program's trust fund will be depleted by 2033 -- three years earlier than projected last year." "Never since the 1983 reforms have we come as close to the point of trust fund depletion as we are right now," trustee Charles Blahous said. But alas, the Washington Post shuffled that story over to page A3 rather than the front page.

So what actually made today's Post front page? Among other things, a highly parochial story about a lawsuit pitting neighbors against each other in a wealthy Northern Virginia community. "Plans for a Va. mansion modeled on Versailles irk neighbors," read the subheadline for Post staffer Justin Jouvenal's 30-paragraph story. Why on Earth is this worthy of front-page space? You have to wait until paragraph 14, when Jouvenal discloses that a former media executive is one of those filing the lawsuit against his neighbor, Young Yi:

The liberal media generally but the Associated Press in particular are acting as mere "stenographers" for Barack Obama, failing to scrutinize the president's campaign rhetoric about the economy, NewsBusters senior editor Tim Graham noted on today's Your World with Neil Cavuto.

"As much as they say they hate being stenographers to power, this really is what we're seeing in this reelection year, and that is, oh, well, Obama said this today and Obama's going to do this today, and they don't seem to come up with any troublesome facts or counter-arguments," the Media Research Center director of media analysis told Stuart Varney, who was substitute-hosting the April 19 program. [MP3 audio here; watch the full segment in the video embedded below]

Earlier this week, NewsBusters publisher and Media Research Center founder Brent Bozell announced he was calling on Congress to investigate Comcast, the parent company of NBC, given the network's malfeasance in the Zimmerman 911 audio editing.

Comcast's "continued silence on how to prevent such malfeasance in the future constitutes a serious breach of public trust," Bozell noted in letters sent to Congress on Tuesday. As the cable giant is "in the midst of a business deal with Verizon requiring approval" by the FCC and DOJ, "the public policy issues related to the approval of this deal are so critical" as to require congressional hearings, Bozell wrote in his April 10 letter to the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights Subcommittee. A similar letter was simultaneously transmitted to the chairman and ranking member of the House Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition and the Internet. You can read those letters here and here.

While most everyone in political circles has condemned Hilary Rosen's slam of Ann Romney, rank-and-file liberals on Twitter apparently haven't read the memo.

Twitchy has an excellent post documenting all the bile, complete with requisite leftist slams of Mrs. Romney as a c*nt, b*tch, and whore. As Michelle Malkin, no stranger to left-wing hate, tweeted, "Some are baptized by fire. On Twitter, outspoken conservative women are baptized by vile."

"Gas prices are soaring again in 2012, yet the auto industry is booming, and drivers, while annoyed, are mostly taking rising fuel costs in stride. What’s changed?" Time magazine's Brad Tuttle asked in an April 10 TIME Moneyland blog post. Tuttle offered numerous explanations but failed to consider the media's coverage as one explanation for why Americans seem to not be seething angry about high gas prices.

As our colleague Julia Seymour of the Media Research Center's Business & Media Institute noted earlier this month (emphasis mine):

When NBC's "Today" show played the audio of George Zimmerman's call to a Sanford, Fla., police dispatcher about Trayvon Martin, the editors made him appear to be a racist who says: "This guy looks like he's up to no good. He looks black." What Zimmerman actually said was: "This guy looks like he's up to no good or he's on drugs or something. It's raining, and he's just walking around, looking about." The 911 officer responded by asking, "OK, and this guy — is he black, white or Hispanic?" Zimmerman replied, "He looks black." NBC says it's investigating the doctoring of the audio, but there's nothing to investigate; its objective was to inflame passions.

In his Associated Press article titled "Old photos may be deceptive in Fla. shooting case," Matt Sedensky pointed out that the photos carried by the major media were several years old and showed Zimmerman looking fat and mean and Martin looking like a sweet young kid.

NewsBusters publisher and Media Research Center (MRC) founder Brent Bozell announced earlier this morning that the MRC is calling upon Congress to investigate Comcast / NBC News for the intentional editing of the George Zimmerman audio that was broadcast multiple times and subsequently flamed the fires of racial hatred and animosity

“NBC is laughing at the public. Last week we said we would have more to say if their behavior in this matter didn’t change.  Given their continued irresponsibility, today we open up a new front," Bozell noted in a press release available here.

Christians are entering the most important season on the annual calendar, celebrating the resurrection of Jesus on Easter Sunday. But the national media often treat Christianity as a religion that imposes itself too aggressively on American society. To review this hostility, MRC has compiled a new Special Report titled "Secular Snobs: Documenting the National Media's Long-Standing Hostility to Religion."

Even in this campaign, reporters have sneered that conservatives like Rick Santorum are seeking a theocracy like Iran or a Christian version of Sharia law. We've gone all the way back to the MRC's founding in 1987 to remember this bias over the years.

Editor's Note: Last week, NBC’s Today show doctored George Zimmerman’s 9-1-1 call so that his motive for shooting Trayvon Martin appeared racial. Over the weekend, NBC reported to The Washington Post that an investigation would be forthcoming after the Media Research Center (MRC) exposed their fraud. It appears NBC’s investigation has been completed.

Last night, NBC issued a two sentence explanation on it. NewsBusters publisher and MRC president Brent Bozell argues that the network's "apology" is as dishonest as the original piece and that Comcast, which owns NBC and MSNBC, needs to clean house at the network:

We reject this fraudulent apology. We're not surprised. After all, NBC "investigated" itself. We again call on Comcast, not NBC, to investigate this matter -- thoroughly, honestly, and professionally.

The Society of Professional Journalists's lifetime achievement award that was named in her honor has been "retired" but Helen "Thank God for Hezbollah" Thomas can console herself with her latest trophy: high praise from the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

The former Hearst syndicated columnist was reportedly feted by the "top Palestinian envoy to the U.S... at his Washington residence." Palestinian legislator (and former girlfriend of the late Peter Jennings) Hanan Ashrawi reportedly presented Thomas with an award on Sunday.

"Current TV said Friday afternoon that it had terminated the contract of its lead anchor, Keith Olbermann, scarcely a year after he was hired to reboot the fledgling channel in his progressive political image. Current indicated that he had failed to honor the terms of his five-year, $50 million contract, giving the channel the right to terminate it," New York Times's Brian Stelter reported this afternoon. For his part, Olbermann trash-tweeted Al Gore and the suits at Current on the way out the door, no doubt in an inspired manner kinda like this.

Let us have a brief moment of silence, followed by hours of exultation. Leave your comments below. Here's a topic starter, borrowed from a Twitter hashtag game (#nextjobforkeith), what will Olbermann's next job be?

Reacting angrily to selective editing by NBC that suggested racial animus by George Zimmerman, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell complained to Fox News's Sean Hannity last night that NBC News was engaged in an "all-out falsehood." The story in question was a March 27 Ron Allen report on NBC's 'Today' in which 911 audio was edited to make it sound like George Zimmerman said "he looks black" immediately after saying "this guy looks like he's up to no good."

In the actual 911 audio, Zimmerman only described Martin's race after the dispatcher asked, "And this guy: is he white, black, or Hispanic?" "To edit that out is so distorting," Hannity complained. "Sean, it's not distorting, it's advancing a falsehood, it's worse," Bozell corrected the Fox News anchor. [see video below page break]

In the aftermath of the Gabby Giffords shooting, the liberal media were quick to harangue conservative Republicans for a campaign website that had depicted tiny images of crosshairs on different points of the continental U.S.. They represented targeted districts in the 2010 midterm race, including Rep. Giffords' seat.

But now in light of the ongoing coverage of the Trayvon Martin shooting, there's a different infamous set of crosshairs, this one over a picture of George Zimmerman, the Sanford, Florida man who claims to have killed Trayvon Martin in self-defense last month. That image is the avatar for a Twitter profile established on March 24 with the handle @KillZimmerman. Despite conservative bloggers and Twitter users' complaints, as of press time the Twitter handle is still live. What's more, the liberal media have thus far been strangely silent on the matter.

After years of denying he was trying to pursue a hard-left audience, MSNBC president Phil Griffin is now shamelessly trying to justify his actions in continuing to employ infamous race-baiter and tax cheat Al Sharpton, host of the cable network's Politics Daily program. The latest controversy for Sharpton involves his dual involvement in covering the case of slain Florida teenager Trayvon Martin on television while at the same time, away from the anchor desk, acting as a belligerent advocate of arresting Martin's killer, George Zimmerman.

Sharpton's conflict of interest, which he barely bothers to disclose to viewers, doesn't bother Griffin; he proudly told AP television reporter David Bauder that he "didn't hire Al to become a neutered kind of news presenter."

"It took the networks nine months before one of them made a mention of" the time that MSNBC anchor and left-wing radio host Ed Schultz slammed conservative radio talker Laura Ingraham as a "slut," and it was just "one story" compared to "46 [stories] in ten days" on the Limbaugh/Fluke controversy, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell noted on the March 23 Hannity.

The Media Research Center founder and president appeared as a guest on the "Language of the Left" special to unveil some numbers that the MRC had crunched contrasting the liberal media's obsession with Limbaugh with their silence on left-wing media personalities like Schultz and HBO's Bill Maher, who called former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin a c**t. The liberal comedian donated $1 million to an Obama Super PAC, and yet the media have been silent on the matter, failing to press the president on whether his Super PAC should give the money back. Watch the full Hannity segment in the video embed below.

On March 7, Newsweek assistant culture editor Marlow Stern went after "right-wing actress" Patricia Heaton of ABC's "The Middle" in an article headlined "Patricia Heaton's History of Outbursts:Sandra Fluke No Anomaly."  He complained "right-wing actress Patricia Heaton unleashed a Twitter tirade against Fluke. But Heaton, best known for playing the caring, cerebral housewife Debra Barone on the hit CBS television sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond, is no stranger to controversial political statements." He didn't interview her. He just "exposed" her.

Nine days later, Stern is lauding hard-left actress Susan Sarandon as "brilliant" and "masterful," and setting her up to make outrageous left-wing attacks on Rush Limbaugh and "the wacky GOP." Despite this, she is not labeled as a liberal: "The seemingly ageless actress is, at 65, also not afraid to speak her mind." Stern didn't so much ask questions as offer please-trash-them softballs:

Editor's Note: What follows is a letter sent by Mr. Bozell to Comcast Chairman Brian L. Roberts earlier today.

Dear Mr. Roberts,

By now, you are well aware of the Media Research Center’s (MRC) concerns with MSNBC.  Last week, I wrote letters to both you and Mr. Griffin asking for Ed Schultz’s termination because of highly controversial and deplorable comments he routinely makes about women and conservatives. Yesterday, I posted an open letter to Mr. Griffin about equally controversial and appalling comments made by Al Sharpton; comments that are blatantly racist and xenophobic, and which in one instance led to the death of an innocent bystander.

Because of these well documented instances of unacceptable comments made by both Sharpton and Schultz, I have called for their termination.  I have also called for Mr. Griffin to resign as president of MSNBC.  In my March 15 letter I called on you to clean house at MSNBC.