It was almost too easy. Up until this morning (August 24, 2005), I had never heard the Stephanie Miller Show on Air America's outlet, KTLK, in Los Angeles. Within 45 seconds (I swear), in a discussion on the media coverage of the recent incendiary remarks by televangelist Pat Robertson, I heard Miller mislead her audience by suggesting that there has been only modest coverage of this story! [link to audio (about 10 minutes in)]
MILLER: Can you even imagine: If any left-winger in this country had said anything even vaguely like that [Robertson's remark], this would have been everywhere!
CO-HOST ("Chris"?): Yup. Fox News would have covered it!
Apparently, Miller and her friend missed some of the coverage of the Robertson episode on these major media outlets:
- ABC's World News Tonight: lead story, August 23, 2005.
- NBC Nightly News: full story, August 23, 2005.
- CBS Evening News: full story, August 23, 2005.
- CNN: lead story on Anderson Cooper 360 ... Paula Zahn Now ... and NewsNight With Aaron Brown. [Thank you! MRC link]
- MSNBC lead story on Hardball with Chris Matthews and Countdown with Keith Olbermann.
- Los Angeles Times: front page story, August 24, 2005.
- The Washington Post: p. A02, August 24, 2005.
- New York Times: page one paragraph with a lead to an inside story, August 24, 2005.
Oh, yeah. Fox News covered the story as well, as it was the lead item for quite a while on its news updates every half hour.
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Also ... A little later, when Miller and her friend were taking some shots at Bill O'Reilly, they similarly mislead their audience:
MILLER: (imitating O'Reilly's voice) "She's done. She's done. She's done."
CO-HOST ("Chris"?): According to the ratings, The Factor is pretty much done.
Says who? The O'Reilly Factor still remains the number-one-rated show in all of cable news ... by far. Take last Wednesday, August 17, 2005, for example: (link): In the 8pm EST hour, O'Reilly garnered 2,784,000 viewers. His nearest competitor was CNN's Paula Zahn, with 560,000 viewers. O'Reilly had nearly five times as many viewers as Zahn!
