Norah O'Donnell

The Big Three networks' evening newscasts have all but punted so far on the 12 lawsuits filed on Monday against the Obama administration, challenging the abortifacient/birth control mandate which is part of ObamaCare. However, CBS actually followed up on their exclusive interview of New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan on the regulation on Tuesday's CBS This Morning.

Correspondent Norah O'Donnell confronted Press Secretary Jay Carney during the Tuesday White House press briefing over Dolan's sharp critique of the mandate on the morning newscast: "He [Dolan] said that it's a 'strait-jacketing' and 'handcuffing exemption.'...Is that what the President is doing...strait-jacketing and hand-cuffing religious institutions?" O'Donnell's question didn't make it on the air on Tuesday's CBS Evening News or Wednesday's CBS This Morning, even after Carney evaded directly answering her question.

CBS chief White House correspondent Norah O'Donnell and Republican strategist Bay Buchanan had a bit of a tussle about women in the workplace on Sunday's Face the Nation.

When Buchanan said opportunities for women are currently unlimited, O'Donnell strongly disagreed claiming, "There is a glass ceiling in politics" which led the conservative to correctly point out this is largely due to women's personal choices rather than anything nefarious (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On Friday's CBS This Morning, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman did his best to brush aside the controversy over liberal diehard Hilary Rosen's attack on Ann Romney, claiming that the issue was "our latest example of false indignation." Friedman also defended the class warfare argument of the frequent visitor of the Obama White House: "I think everyone knows the point Hilary Rosen was trying to make."

The left-leaning columnist also claimed that the defense of Mrs. Romney was a cynical ploy for the votes of women: "When you have a close race like this, that is so close, you need every vote, particularly if you're in Romney's case – nineteen points behind on women – you're going to seize on anything...this was a chance to jump on it- you know, use it as a wedge issue, get some more votes." [audio clips available here; video below the jump]

Filling in for Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation, Norah O’Donnell hit Republican Congressman Paul Ryan from the left, using White House talking points to contend his budget plan helps the rich and hurts the poor, but with her next guest, liberal Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer, she simply cued him up to react to Ryan and ruminate on whether ObamaCare will be a campaign issue.

“The current tax rate for the wealthiest Americans is 35 percent, you would reduce it to 25 percent and the White House says, that under your plan, you would give millionaires in this country a 150,000 tax cut,” CBS’s chief White House correspondent asserted. Ryan reorted: “Those numbers obviously are not credible.” Not dissuaded, O’Donnell cited “$810 billion in cuts to Medicaid” and demanded: “How can you guarantee people that you’re not giving tax cuts to the wealthiest and taking away aid to the poor?”

CBS has not even mentioned a new book spilling unflattering details about former President John F. Kennedy, but they devoted over 8 minutes Tuesday morning to a fawning report on former First Lady Jackie Kennedy's scripted interview with CBS inside the White House.

Liberal presidential historian Douglas Brinkley hailed the day when Kennedy "became America's sweetheart," adding that "50 years later, she still is." [Video below the break.]

Charlie Rose boosted a jaw-dropping line from Politico's Roger Simon on Friday's CBS This Morning, which concluded that the Republican presidential debates were hurting the party's chances at defeating President Obama: "It is said that in Chicago, where they are running the Obama campaign, that they're so giddy that they want to run naked in Millennium Park" [audio available here; video below the jump].

Simon's actual sentence in his Thursday piece was more graphic:

By many measures, Barack Obama has left the State of the Union in tatters, but the liberal media, led by the highly rated Big Three network (ABC, CBS, NBC) news shows, have attempted to cover up those holes in the Union by mostly ignoring the Obama administration’s greatest failings. From record numbers of people on food stamps, to the administration’s support of failed energy companies while rejecting an oil pipeline that would result in thousands of jobs, the Big Three networks haven’t told their viewers the full story of Obama’s pathetic track record.

The following are just a few of the glaring examples of Obama’s failed administration and the coverage, or lack thereof, the Big Three networks on their evening news shows (ABC’s World News, CBS’s Evening News, NBC’s Nightly News), morning shows (ABC’s Good Morning America, CBS’s The Early Show, recently re-titled This Morning, NBC’s Today) and Sunday political roundtable shows (ABC’s This Week, CBS’s Face the Nation, NBC’s Meet the Press) have given them.

As NewsBusters previously reported, CNN's Piers Morgan on Tuesday told Andrew Breitbart that he's "notoriously evil about almost everybody."

The following morning, comedian and syndicated radio host Dennis Miller called Morgan out for this affront likening him to "Norah O'Donnell in an ascot" while advising him to check the Neilsen ratings "to see how long people are bumping into [his] show" (video follows with transcript and absolutely no need for additional commentary):

CBS's Bob Schieffer led his interview of Herman Cain on Tuesday's Early Show by asking, "Why did you accept the invitation?" Cain must have been wondering that himself by the end of the segment, as Schieffer and Norah O'Donnell conducted a hostile interrogation of the entrepreneur, pressing him about his qualifications to be secretary of defense, and even asked about the state of his marriage.

The Face the Nation host, filling in as CBS transitions to its new morning show lineup, noted how someone at his network "had the idea...why don't we ask Herman Cain to come on?...Well, of all things he said, yes." Schieffer then turned to the former GOP presidential candidate and asked his "why accept the invitation" question, adding, "Do you have something you want to tell us this morning? Are you going to endorse a candidate? What brings you to television this morning?"

Throughout coverage of President Obama's address to Congress Thursday night, anchors and correspondents on both CBS and NBC gave fawning reviews of the new jobs plan, in some cases, even before the speech began. In contrast, ABC took a much more skeptical tone, with a focus on the President's falling poll numbers.  

Evening News anchor Scott Pelley opened CBS's coverage by proclaiming the President was "hanging out a 'help wanted' sign" for unemployed Americans, with chief White House correspondent Norah O'Donnell excitedly announcing moments later that Obama would put forward "an extraordinarily bold plan" to create jobs.

CBS's Bill Plante hyped the supposedly "testy confrontation" between President Obama and Speaker Boehner on Thursday's Early Show over scheduling a presidential address to Congress: "This may prove that there is no argument too petty in today's Washington." By contrast, on Wednesday's CBS Evening News, Norah O'Donnell placed more blame on Obama for giving Boehner only a "15-minute heads-up."
       
Plante began with his "petty" line during his report just after the beginning of the 7 am Eastern hour, and added that "it was the timing of the President's speech that became the subject of a testy confrontation between the President and the Speaker, and the Speaker won." An on-screen graphic trumpeted the "speech spat: Obama & Boehner spar over jobs address."

Broadcasting & Cable magazine published a cover story in its August 22 issue [not available online] complaining that the stakes are too high in the 2012 campaign to just let (Republican) candidates get away with their own talking points. The headline was "Just Say Something! Candidates have been dodging questions for decades, but with astronomical stakes this election cycle, it's more prevalent than ever."

Right underneath this headline was a picture of Rep. Michele Bachmann wih the headline in capital red letters "The Queen of the Page." It continued: "As in the ones Rep. Michele Bachmann's talking points are written on, as she may be the most well-coached candidate to come along in years -- and certainly in this election cycle -- according to national news anchors." Is that an insult to Obama? Or does it simply mean he doesn't need to have his talking points questioned?  Underneath were the analysis of network hosts on Bachmann's slipperiness:

CBS’s Norah O’Donnell, filling in on Face the Nation, just couldn’t comprehend how a candidate espousing true conservative views could possibly capture the White House. Referring to Rick Perry, she demanded: “Can the Republican Party elect someone President who doesn't believe in global warming?”

She described Perry’s fairly conventional conservative assessment of Social Security as “controversial,” citing how in his book he described the program as “a crumbling monument to the failure of the New Deal,” a “bad disease” and that “it was set up like a, quote ‘illegal Ponzi scheme.’” Repeating her earlier formulation, O’Donnell wondered: “Can you elect a Republican to the White House who thinks Social Security is a bad disease?”

On Monday's CBS Evening News and Tuesday's Early Show, CBS failed to cover an Iowa Tea Party activist's confrontation with President Obama. Both ABC's GMA and NBC's Today mentioned the encounter. Just days earlier, CBS and ABC spotlighted how left-wing protesters heckled Mitt Romney at an Iowa appearance and how the Republican apparently made a "gaffe" in reply.

NBC correspondent Chuck Todd noted the "heated exchange" between Tea Partier Ryan Rhodes and the President midway through his report just after the top of the 7 am Eastern hour of Today:

On Sunday's Face The Nation, CBS's Norah O'Donnell interrogated Congresswoman Michele Bachmann on a 2006 statement she made about being "submissive" to her husband. O'Donnell not only played a clip of the five-year-old moment, but asked her three questions about the biblical verse: "What do you mean wives should be submissive to their husbands?...Do you think submissive means subservient?" [audio available here]

The fill-in anchor raised the issue, which also came up during the recent Republican presidential debate in Ames, Iowa, near the end of the interview. Bachmann more or less repeated her answer from that debate in reply to O'Donnell's question:

[Video clips below the jump]

ABC’s Jake Tapper on Thursday night scolded Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney for a “gaffe” over his assertion that “corporations are people” since “everything corporations earn ultimately goes to the people.”

That common sense observation came in reaction to a bunch of hecklers, from a left-wing activist group, who confronted Romney in Iowa, yet neither ABC or CBS acknowledged their agenda. The CBS Evening News, in fact, put “Voter Anger” on screen over one of the screaming leftists as anchor Scott Pelley declared “voters are angry about the economy.”

On Monday's Early Show, CBS's Norah O'Donnell promoted the left-of-center talking point that Standard & Poor's recent lowering of the U.S.'s credit rating is a "Tea Party downgrade." O'Donnell played three sound bites of notable liberals using this line of attack, versus only one opposing from a center-right politician. She also spun Treasury Geithner's decision to stay as "good news for the President."

The correspondent began her report by trumpeting how apparently, "this was supposed to be a week when President Obama was going to turn his attention toward jobs with a positive message. But instead, he's dealing with this talk of a double-dip recession, that the terrible week in the markets last week, and that credit downgrade."

CBS's Norah O'Donnell played the role of a clairvoyant on Tuesday's Early Show as she hinted that President Obama's reelection is assured in 2012. Anchor Erica Hill asked O'Donnell how the White House viewed the debt ceiling bill. She replied, "I think they feel like this was... not necessarily a victory for the President. He did get an extension of this debt ceiling through 2012 and through his reelection" [video clips available here; audio can be downloaded here].

Hill brought on the new CBS News White House correspondent, as well as Nancy Cordes, their congressional correspondent, to discuss the return of Rep. Gabby Giffords to the floor of the House of Representatives on Monday and their passage of the compromise debt ceiling legislation. Towards the end of the segment, after she and O'Donnell laughed it up about Vice President Biden's crack about Giffords being part of the "cracked heads club," the anchor asked her question about the White House's take on the bill. Her colleague replied with her off-the-cuff prediction:

 As Sunday’s CBS Evening News recounted the day of marriage ceremonies for gay couples in New York state, where same-sex marriage has just been legalized, correspondent Jim Axelrod spent much of his report focusing on all the marriage benefits couples will not enjoy because the federal government does not recognize such unions. But he also found a consequence for some couples who may lose domestic partner benefits from their employers who are now planning to cut back such benefits and pressure couples to get married to qualify.

 On Sunday, the CBS Evening News and NBC’s Meet the Press both briefly noted an unfolding sex scandal involving Oregon Democratic Representative David Wu, who is being accused of making unwanted sexual advances toward the teenage daughter of a political donor.

CBS substitute anchor Norah O’Donnell directly labeled Wu as a Democrat, While NBC’s David Gregory indirectly hinted at Wu’s Democratic ties by noting that the Congressman had met with "leader of the Democrats, Pelosi."

Both broadcasts noted the scandal toward the end of the program.

Below are the transcripts of portions of the CBS Evening News and NBC’s Meet the Press where the Wu story were covered:

As she steps into her new role as CBS News Chief White House correspondent, Norah O'Donnell may have made a good impression on the man she'll now be covering with comments she made this weekend.

While chatting with the panel of "The Chris Matthews Show," O'Donnell told the host that President Obama has more aggressively prosecuted the War on Terror than George W. Bush (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Bill O'Reilly of Fox News and former CBS News reporter Bernie Goldberg exposed left-wing media bias on Monday's edition of The O'Reilly Factor when discussing NBC's editing of the Pledge of Allegiance. "I don't know if it was an honest mistake or, more likely, if it was a lefty producer flexing his muscles. I don't know. But I know one thing. It was really, really dumb," said Goldberg.

O'Reilly ascribed the decision to secularism in today's media. "I think that inside NBC there is so much of this secular left-wing craziness that Comcast is --  if you ask the head of Comcast --  Burke I think his name is [Steven Burke] -- do you want me to take out the words "under God, indivisible" from the Pledge of Allegiance, I don't think Mr. Burke would say, 'You know, yank that right out of there.' It's so unbelievable." said O'Reilly.

UPDATE AT END OF POST: O'Donnell contacts NB to clarify poll numbers.

CBS's new chief White House correspondent said this weekend that Republicans are more uncomfortable with a Fox News commentator as presidential candidate than they are a Mormon.

She claimed on "The Chris Matthews Show" she found this information in the crosstabs of a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll (video follows with transcript and commentary):

"If Time-magaziner-turned-White House-press-sec Jay Carney ever tires of defending President Obama," wrote NB's Mark Finkelstein earlier this year, "Norah O'Donnell clearly seems ready to step in."

News broke Thursday that O'Donnell will, in fact, be moving to the White House briefing room, but she'll staying on the same side of the podium as CBS's Chief White House Correspondent. But that doesn't mean her incessant cheerleaeding for the Obama administration and its party will relent.

O'Donnell is one of television news's more blatantly liberal non-prime time personalities. In light of the move, let's review just a few of her "greatest hits."

In an exchange with Pat Buchanan on Thursday’s “Morning Joe,” MSNBC reporter Norah O’Donnell demonstrated just how out of touch she is when it comes to her view of the state of the American economy (video follows page break): 

On Monday's Today on NBC, correspondent Norah O'Donnell excitedly touted President Obama's stop in Ireland on his latest European trip as she proclaimed: "The Irish eyes are smiling today as this country welcomes President Obama. And I can tell you that the people here in Moneygall are overjoyed that Obama has Irish roots."

The report opened with a musical rendition of 'There's no one as Irish as Barack Obama,' as O'Donnell described how "Obama's ancestral hometown....got a face lift, a fresh coat of paint and an Obama Café." After discovering from a local priest that Obama's Irish ancestors were well-off shoemakers that may have provided charitable aid to others in the small town, O'Donnell wondered: "So you're telling me that his great, great, great, great grandfather and ancestors were community organizers?"

As NewsBusters has been reporting, since President Obama once again proposed letting the Bush tax cuts expire for the highest earning Americans, the media have been supporting it almost 24 hours a day.

Doing his part this weekend was Chris Matthews who after the introduction of the syndicated program bearing his name actually began the show, "Why is taxing the rich so hard?" (video follows with transcript and lots of commentary):

On Wednesday's Andrea Mitchell Reports on MSNBC, fill-in host Norah O'Donnell spoke with  liberal Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne about his claim that the United States is "not broke," but simply needs to "raise revenue" through higher taxes. She teased the segment by wondering: "Is Washington really as broke as lawmakers make it seem?"

O'Donnell described Dionne's latest column as "provocative" and asked, "How can you say there is no crisis?" Dionne argued: "...we are in this strait partly because of an economic downturn, when things get better, when the economy gets better, revenue comes in. We're also in this trouble because we cut taxes and started two wars at the same time back at the beginning of the last decade."