Katie Couric

Deaths, guns, whistle-blowers and the highest law officer in the land stonewalling a congressional investigation are the juicy ingredients of a story network news reporters would love to cover – if a Republican were in office. However, when Attorney General Eric Holder testified on Thursday (February 2) before a House oversight committee investigating Operation Fast and Furious, the news was completely ignored by NBC and ABC (there was one full story on Friday’s CBS This Morning). The virtual blackout of Holder’s testimony continues an overall trend of ABC and NBC burying one of the Obama administration’s biggest scandals, despite continual coverage by their competitors at CBS, CNN and Fox News.

MRC analysts reviewed the Big Three network evening and morning news shows and found that while CBS aired 29 stories and 1 brief on Fast and Furious, ABC aired only one brief on the June 15, 2011 edition of Good Morning America. That was still better than what NBC did on their morning and evening news programs, as the gunwalking story has never been mentioned on either NBC Nightly News or the Today show. NBC’s Miguel Almaguer, in a report primarily about a Mexican mother accusing border patrol agents of killing her 17-year old son as he tried to scale a wall, did note that “In December, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed in a shootout with bandits.” However, Almaguer never tied the Terry killing back to the gunwalking scandal.

Barack Obama’s invitation to Warren Buffett’s secretary, Debbie Bosanek, to tonight’s State of the Union Address is bound to please not only Bosanek’s boss but also the liberal media that has allied with Buffett in his mission to raise taxes on the rich. For over 10 years the Berkshire Hathaway CEO has campaigned to sop the wealthy with burdensome taxes, and his friends in the media have been all too willing to advance his myth that secretaries pay more in taxes than their boss.

The following articles from the MRC’s archive represent just a few of the more recent and obnoxious examples of Buffett and Obama’s friends in the media carrying water for their crusade to soak America’s job creators:

Tuesday night, President Obama delivers his third State of the Union address, and his sixth speech to a joint session of Congress since taking office in 2009. But there’s no need to spend a lot of time wondering about what the media will say after The Great One speaks, since — like a gaggle of corporate yes-men — journalists have gushed over every one of these major addresses.

“It was a big and bold speech,” ABC’s Terry Moran applauded on Nightline shortly after Obama’s budget address in February 2009, his first before Congress. “It was his debut and he wowed us,” MSNBC’s Chris Matthews enthused the next day on Hardball.

This week NBC’s Today show has been celebrating 60 years on the air, and for over 20 of those years the MRC has been documenting that show’s morning show’s liberal agenda. Earlier this week, Newsbusters took a look at that show’s Top 10 Most Obnoxiously Liberal Quotes, today it’s time to review some of the silly moments on Today. From former anchor and millionaire Katie Couric fretting about high gas prices to current co-anchor Ann Curry’s inability to find the state of Illinois on a map, MRC analysts have documented some of the silliest moments from that show’s hosts.

The following are five of the silliest Today show anchor  moments plucked from the MRC archive. (Top 5 Video Countdown after the jump)

This week the Today show is celebrating 60 years of being on the air, and for over 20 of those years the MRC has been documenting the NBC morning show’s liberal agenda. From past anchors like Bryant Gumbel blaming “right wing” talk radio for the Oklahoma City bombing and  Katie Couric trashing Ronald Reagan as an “airhead,” up through current anchor Matt Lauer wondering how Barack Obama would “manage the expectations” of being called “The Messiah,”
MRC analysts have been documenting the worst the show has offered.

The following are 10 of the most obnoxiously liberal examples of Today show bias from the MRC’s archive; for even more bias from the Today show anchors please visit the Profile in Bias pages of Gumbel, Couric, Lauer, Meredith Vieira and Ann Curry. (Top 10 Video Countdown after the jump)

CBS revealed its double standard in its treatment of Republican presidential candidates versus Democratic ones on Wednesday's Early Show, as Jim Axelrod and Nancy Cordes pressed Mitt Romney about the challenges ahead in the race the day after he won in Iowa. By contrast, then-anchor Katie Couric gushed over a "humanized" and "emotional" Hillary Clinton the day after the 2008 New Hampshire primary.

After joking with Romney about his eight vote margin of victory at the beginning of the interview, Axelrod asked the former Massachusetts governor about the apparent slim rise in the number of votes he gained in the 2012 Iowa caucuses versus four years earlier: "I'm wondering just one number...six years you've spent out in Iowa, and I think you end up with 66 more votes this time than in 2008. Can you explain this challenge you had in Iowa about getting more traction this go around?"

President Barack Obama's nicknaming his new tax increases on the wealthy the "Warren Buffett rule" is fitting since the billionaire has spent a decade campaigning for a tax hike, a campaign his friends in the liberal media have been more than willing to join. For over 10 years the media promoted Buffett's complaint that the wealthy in America don't pay enough in taxes, spurred on by a Buffett's anecdote that he pays less in taxes than his receptionist. 

But even the AP has pointed out, the idea that secretaries pay more in taxes than their bosses is inaccurate. A review of IRS 2009 tax tables (Link to Excel spreadsheet) shows that those making under $100,000/year pay an average of no more than 12.3% of their income in taxes, while those making above $500,000 pay an average of no less than 26.3% of their income in taxes. However, this fact hasn't stopped the liberal media from happily advancing Buffett's call to soak his fellow rich.

Not surprisingly, conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh had some choice words Monday for the media's epic fail concerning their hunt for dirt in the recently-released email of former Alaska governor Sarah Palin.

Probably the best line concerning this disgraceful episode was, "Palin did better in her public colonoscopy than Katie Couric did in hers" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Due to perpetually low ratings, we won’t see how former CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric would dismiss Weinergate. But on her Twitter page on Thursday, Couric tweeted: “I'm curious if anybody thinks this Anthony Weiner Twitter scandal is a legit news story or just fodder for late-night comedians...thoughts?”

So much for Couric's Twitter motto: "True journalism separates fact from fiction. Passionate about discovering what makes the world tick."  Like many liberals (and feminists), Couric somehow can’t believe this could be true, that a 46-year-old married Member of Congress would be stupid and creepy enough to send a crotch picture to a college student young enough to be his daughter. What if Weiner had bulge-tweeted her 19-year-old daughter?

It turns out retired CBS News anchor Katie Couric had at least one fan during her failed attempt to lift the network's evening newscast out of the ratings cellar: Gail Collins, former editorial page editor of the New York Times turned feminist columnist. Collins devoted her Saturday column to Couric’s significance as the first female nightly news anchor: "Katie Couric Moves On."

After hailing Couric’s (of course) "historic Sarah Palin interview," Collins declared Couric a "total success," ratings be damned. How so? By managing "not to screw things up." (The soft bigotry of low expectations?)

From my perspective as a charter of the progress of American women, Couric was a total success. The first great mandate for a First Woman is not to screw things up for the Second Woman or the Third. On that count, Couric did great. She was under incredible scrutiny and pressure, and she held up her end. There was never a point at which American viewers turned to each other and said: "Well, that certainly didn’t work out."

Ending her final night as anchor of the CBS Evening News with a “five years in five minutes” video retrospective, Katie Couric went out in sync with how she conducted herself since 2006 – challenging and discrediting conservatives while providing a platform to liberals to disparage conservatives. 

Her Thursday night highlight package began with Couric pressing President George W. Bush in 2006: “Is there anything that you wish you had done differently?” From there, CBS jumped to actor Michael Fox: “I could give a damn about Rush Limbaugh's opinion.” After clips on wild fires, steroids and the Virginia Tech shooting, viewers heard this blast from Valerie Plame: “I never once considered that, in fact, this administration would betray my identity as payback.”

Getting to the 2008 campaign, CBS played a friendly clip of Couric empathizing with Joe Biden: “Are you worried you're going to have to pull your punches a bit?” Then, instead of re-running her “what newspapers do you read?” question, Couric chose instead to highlight, just weeks after Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan, how Sarah Palin had said that nation was not protecting al-Qaeda. (Video excerpt after jump) MP3 audio

CBS's Elaine Quijano filed a slanted report on Wednesday's Evening News about the new report on the Catholic priest child sex abuse scandal. All but one of the sound bites which Quijano played during the segment either leaned negative against the Catholic Church or completely slammed the religious body.

Anchor Katie Couric heralded the negative reaction about the report from some quarters in her teaser for Quijano's report at the very beginning of the half-hour program: "Tonight, a report commissioned by the Catholic Church claims to know why the child sex abuse scandal happened, but victims' groups aren't buying it." A minute later, the correspondent picked up where Couric left off in her introduction: "For survivors of clergy sexual abuse, today marks another deep disappointment."

Tomorrow marks Katie Couric’s last night at the anchor desk of the CBS Evening News. Five years ago, CBS executives were so excited about the Today show star taking over, her September 5, 2006 debut was preceded by a massive publicity campaign. Outgoing interim anchor Bob Schieffer vouched for his replacement: “She’s tough, she’s fair, she’s a straight shooter....Just watch.”  Long-retired anchorman Walter Cronkite even lent his voice to a new opening segment, announcing: “This is the CBS Evening News, with Katie Couric.”

Intrigued by the publicity, more than 13 million Americans tuned into that first night, according to Nielsen research, but Couric’s honeymoon was brief. CBS had been in third place for years under Dan Rather and Schieffer, but the slide worsened after Couric took over. By August 2010, the CBS Evening News was recording its lowest ratings ever — fewer than 5 million viewers. (A review of Couric's worst bias, with video, after the jump.)

In surveying the wreckage of the Katie Couric experiment at CBS – $75 million flushed away for a distant third-place finish each week – the liberal journalists are blaming elderly viewers for not accepting Sunny Katie. Here’s James Rainey in the Los Angeles Times:

A change-averse viewership doubtless greeted the initial formatting changes for Couric's "Evening News" as confirmation that "America's Sweetheart," straight from her sunny a.m. perch, didn't have the gravitas for the job. Actually, those impressions had little to do with the newscast that emerged over Couric's five-year tenure.

And what, pray tell, proves Couric’s gravitas? Bashing Sarah Palin, of course, as uninformed. Rainey didn’t ask how Couric would have performed if the tables were turned and Palin was the one holding the microphone like a baseball bat:

NBC's Tina Fey guest-hosted "Saturday Night Live" last evening, and viewers could hardly be surprised her network took the opportunity to once again use her to bash former Alaska governor Sarah Palin.

In a mock Republican presidential candidates debate, before depicting Palin as an idiot that doesn't fully understand English, Fey did manage to take a humorous swipe at the soon to be exiting CBS "Evening News" host saying, "I want to acknowledge that this week we finally vanquished one of the world's great villains, and I for one am thrilled to say good riddance to Katie Couric" (video follows with partial transcript):

ABC's World News on Tuesday continued to demonstrate the network's lack of interest in whether enhanced interrogation methods such as waterboarding played a part in the killing of Osama bin laden. The Diane Sawyer-anchored program was the only newscast to avoid the topic.

In contrast, Nightly News host Brian Williams interviewed CIA director Leon Panetta, grilling, "Can you confirm that it was as a result of waterboarding that we learned what we needed to learn to go after bin Laden?" He hammered the question three times, adding, "...Are you denying that waterboarding was in part among the tactics used to extract the intelligence that led to this successful mission?"

On the CBS Evening News, anchor Katie Couric made similar points to Panetta: "One of President Obama's first acts was to outlaw enhanced interrogation techniques. Now, some of these were used on detainees who provided information that led to bin Laden's whereabouts. Given that, do you think the use of these techniques should, in fact, be re-evaluated?"

Today CBS News officially announced that longtime correspondent Scott Pelley will be taking the reins of the CBS Evening News from departing anchor Katie Couric. A review of the MRC's archive reveals Pelley will most likely continue the long tradition of liberal bias advanced by his anchor predecessors Couric, Dan Rather and Walter Cronkite.    

From celebrating the likes of liberal heroes like Hillary Clinton, saying that she is of the rare few that can match Barack Obama's "global star power" to even offering praise of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, depicting him as a "genuinely humble" figure with "no fancy clothes, fancy cars" who was "absolutely incorruptible," Pelley's new stint as anchor promises to be one filled with biased platitudes for those on the left and harsh criticism of the right.

Below the jump are just a couple examples of Pelley's bias over the years, but to see even more outrageous outakes from Pelley's time as a correspondent for the CBS Evening News and 60 Minutes please visit his Profile in Bias page at MRC.org.

 On Thursday’s Joy Behar Show on HLN, host Behar quipped that former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has returned "like jock itch," after playing a clip of Palin on Fox News Channel making fun of CBS anchor Katie Couric. Behar: "I give Sarah Palin credit. She's out of favor. She's out of the limelight. And then, suddenly, she's back like jock itch, and just as snarky as ever."

After commentary from her panel members for the segment, the HLN host ended up cracking that Palin is reminding people that she’s "illiterate" because the former Alaska governor also alluded to her own answer to Couric’s question about what she reads. Behar: "I think that she learned from being on Saturday Night Live that the way to reconstruct your image is to take the joke on yourself. But all she's doing is reminding us that she's illiterate."

Panel member and actor Josh Gad then oddly suggested that Palin has a history of making anti-Semitic jokes as he chimed in: "I miss her anti-Semitic jokes so much."

Both CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric and MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell incorrectly asserted that President Obama is the only president in U.S. history who has had his citizenship doubted. In reality, both CBSNews.com and MSNBC.com posted a 2009 Associated Press article that detailed 21st President Chester A. Arthur having to deal with a similar controversy in the 1880 presidential campaign.

On Wednesday's CBS Evening News, outgoing anchor Katie Couric began the broadcast by declaring: "It was an extraordinary moment, President Obama went on national television today and did what no other president has ever even been asked to do, prove he's a natural born U.S. citizen." On Thursday's Andrea Mitchell Reports on MSNBC, host Andrea Mitchell similarly proclaimed: "I mean, people who want to raise these conspiracy theorists – theories – and there is no other explanation other than, you know, sort of pure racism, because it's never been raised about a white president."

The votes are in and CBS, do we have a treat for you.

We received nearly 1,800 responses from our Facebook fans proposing who you should hire to replace Katie Couric. Ten people were recommended most frequently, listed below the page break.

Other entertaining suggestions include:

On Sunday, a Wikileaks document dump revealed files from Guantanamo Bay in which military commanders noted the Finsbury Park mosque in north London was a "haven" for Islamic extremists, "an attack planning and propaganda production base" that recruited jihadists to fight in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

But while the American mainstream media have been ga-ga over tomorrow's royal wedding, there's been little if any attention paid to this development by the very same reporters who were packing their bags for London.

A search of Nexis for ABC, CBS, and NBC news transcripts from April 25 through today reveals nothing on the Finsbury Park mosque, although other information from the latest wikileaks dump was discussed.

CBS's Bob Schieffer said Wednesday that Donald Trump is racist because he wants to see Barack Obama's college grades.

Such was told to Katie Couric on the "Evening News" (video follows with partial transcript and commentary):

Rumor has it that CBS News is going to name Scott Pelley as Couric's successor. But what's the rush? You've been in last place for well over a decade. Another few days won't matter. Do not make (another) rash, premature, impulsive decision. Vet all your options – especially when the MRC’s 500,000 members are coming to the rescue.

I'm pleased to announce that the Media Research Center has launched a national search committee and is soliciting recommendations for the next CBS Evening News anchor.

It's now official.

Katie Couric is leaving the HMS "Evening News" on a life raft, having skillfully piloted the newscast to lower ratings depths during her time at the helm.

Equally liberal "60 Minutes" co-host Scott Pelley will likely take the conn, the New York Daily News is reporting:

Easter is the quintessential Christian holiday - the celebration of Jesus Christ's death and resurrection. Although it has been celebrated by billions of people around the world for nearly 2,000 years, the mainstream media would rather celebrate the liberal holiday known as "Earth Day" and connect Easter to the abuse scandal that surrounded the Roman Catholic Church. Some major Findings:

Old media is nothing, if not oblivious to its consistently declining popularity among the public at large. This tired, but time-tested pattern of misplacing causes of failure was borne out once again via the recent musings of none other than the soon-to-be-former CBS "Evening News" anchor Katie Couric.

In a Q & A published Monday in the New York Times, interviewer Adam Goldman questioned Couric about why the show she has hosted since September 2006 remains in third place, despite effusive initial plaudits and wall-to-wall marketing. Couric replied (emphasis mine):

I believe we were in third place for 13 years before I got here, and I think habits, particularly with an evening news broadcast, move at a glacial pace. And I think that local news stations have something to do with it.