Tom Brokaw

On Monday, Today co-host Matt Lauer pushed Mitt Romney to stop running an ad that features a clip of former NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw reporting Newt Gingrich being charged with ethics violations in 1997. However, it has now been 4,742 days without an NBC story on Gingrich subsequently being cleared on those charges.

Even as Lauer grilled Romney on use of the NBC News coverage, he still failed to correct the record with the fact that in 1999 the Internal Revenue Service completely vindicated Gingrich. Instead, Lauer simply noted how upset Brokaw was: "[He] released a statement saying, quote, 'I'm extremely uncomfortable with the extended use of my personal image in this political ad. I do not want my role as a journalist compromised for political gain by any campaign.'"

Editor's Note: What follows is a statement released this morning by NewsBusters publisher and Media Research Center (MRC) president Brent Bozell.

Come on, Tell The Truth, Tom! What really irks you is not that you're part of a presidential ad; it's that you're part of a Republican candidate's ad. You used NBC and your anchor chair as a platform to promote Democratic agendas and delight in Republican setbacks for more than 20 years. And you stood behind that reporting as a fair exercise in journalistic ethics, even when it was far from the truth.

If Tom Brokaw really cared about this kind of bias, he would do something about his own network and especially its sister network MSNBC given their outrageous pro-Obama nightly commentary disguised as news.

In what amounted to a love letter to California's Democratic Governor Jerry Brown on Thursday's NBC Nightly News, special correspondent Tom Brokaw gushed: "It's not sunshine every day for the California economy, but Jerry Brown has not given up on big dreams. His new big dream, a high-speed rail line from the north to the south..."

Anchor Brian Williams set the scene for Brokaw's fawning report: "California is mounting a comeback led by a man whose name has been synonymous with California government for decades." Brokaw sympathetically declared: "The one-time boy wonder of California politics is now the state's aging lion....Sticking up for his state."

Despite the fact that Nancy Pelosi has failed to produce any evidence to back up her claim that she "knows something" about Newt Gingrich that would end his candidacy, on Thursday's NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer still touted her unfounded remarks: "...she makes this comment saying, 'Newt Gingrich will not be president, there's something I know.' Now that in itself sounds pretty alarming."  

Talking to special correspondent Tom Brokaw, Lauer suggested Pelosi must have some really damaging information that needs to be made public: "Clearly, she's hinting that she learned something that will make, will disqualify him as president. Does she have the right to back out now and back off of that?"

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:

Appearing on Thursday's NBC Today, special correspondent Tom Brokaw touted GOP presidential candidates attacking Mitt Romney's business experience at Bain Capital: "It's the Republican Party equivalent of a jihad....the real danger for the Republicans is that it will deeply divide the party at a time when they want it to be united." [Audio available here]

While promoting the Republican infighting, Brokaw repeatedly confused Mitt Romney with his father and former Michigan Governor George Romney: "[Senator Jim DeMint said] George Romney is going to win this primary in South Carolina....They're going hard after George Romney....George Romney seems to be holding his own and the momentum continues for him..." At one point, co-host Ann Curry corrected him: "Mitt Romney." Brokaw explained: "His father was George Romney, that's my generational slip." [View video after the jump]

On Tuesday's NBC Nightly News, correspondent Tom Brokaw asked Perry, Iowa resident Eddie Diaz: "Were you accepted right away by the community?" Brokaw explained: "Diaz is a Perry high school teacher, part of a growing Hispanic population....Eddie could go elsewhere, but he likes Perry, which he says is more moderate, politically and culturally, than the candidates realize."

Brokaw touted how Diaz lectured Michele Bachmann at a campaign event: "Recently he challenged Michele Bachmann for her hard line on immigration." Diaz argued: "Why would you choose to punish these kids?...Because every election cycle, immigration is used as a punching bag, and it's just so easy to demonize people."

Appearing as a guest on Wednesday's Piers Morgan Tonight on CNN ,as he discussed the Occupy Wall Street protests, former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw warned that a "class war" could develop unless "income inequality" is addressed. Brokaw:

Appearing as a guest on Wednesday's Piers Morgan Tonight on CNN, former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw recounted some of the rationale behind why the Bush administration believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction before the invasion of Iraq, even noting that President Clinton had also believed in the presence of WMD. (Video below)

"We need to re-evaluate what is required in our lives, so that we have a sense of satisfaction.  What really counts?  One friend of mine has reduced it to this: you should get up in the morning and ask 'what do I need,' not just 'what do I want?'" -- Tom Brokaw, Morning Joe 11-1-11.

"Of course, one of the reasons I bought it was to be able to get away from the frantic life I lead and to have some privacy." -- Tom Brokaw, explaining his purchase of an interest in a 4,000-acre mountain retreat in Montana.

Tom Brokaw: a Michael Moore kind of millionaire?  We haven't seen him getting down with the Occupy kids like the documentary-maker recently did.  But there was Brokaw--who has amassed a reported $70 million and owns a 4000-acre "mountain retreat" in Montana--on Morning Joe today preaching the virtues of the simple life . . . for others. Video after the jump.

White House senior adviser David Plouffe said on Sunday's Meet the Press that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney "has no core" and would say "the sky was green and the grass was blue to win an election."

After Republican strategist Mike Murphy took exception with these comments during the program's roundtable segment, former NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw came to Plouffe's defense (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Discussing the possibility of Chris Christie entering the presidential race on Wednesday's NBC "Today," Tom Brokaw praised the New Jersey Govenor as a moderate: "He's not an ideologue.... he played outside the ideological lines that have been drawn in the Republican primary."

Co-host Matt Lauer said of Christie, "...a lot of conservative Republicans, while loving the fact that he's a fiscal conservative, perhaps aren't going to like his stand on some other issues..." Brokaw saw that as a positive: "The question is, who's going to run the Republican primaries? Right now, the dialogue is being dominated by the Tea Party but there are a lot of other Republicans who say, 'We've got to play outside of the Tea Party playbook and this is a guy who can do that.'"

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.

By all accounts, President Obama has been far more hawkish than anyone anywhere in the world could have possibly imagined.

Despite this, "New Yorker" magazine editor David Remnick told the crew at MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Friday that the current Administration is responsible for the lack of anti-American displays in Arab Spring uprisings (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Tom Brokaw, on Wednesday's Today show, welcomed Rick Perry into the GOP race for president by trying to scare that show's liberal viewers with the Texas governor's views on Social Security and the Supreme Court. The former NBC Nightly News anchor predicted that Republicans at the NBC News/Politico GOP presidential debate will "take a whack" at the new frontrunner, adding that they will be "looking at a book he wrote...called Fed Up."

Brokaw then listed, what he viewed, were controversial points in the book: "He describes Social Security as a Ponzi scheme. He said that the Supreme Court is an oligarchy with a two-thirds vote. He talked about succession [sic]."

Tonight Brian Williams will moderate, along with Politico's John F. Harris, the GOP presidential candidate debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. If recent performances by the NBC Nightly News anchor are an indication, candidates (particularly those favored by the Tea Party) should recognize his hostility to their agenda and be prepared for a number of topics and questions from the left.

Ever since its emergence, Williams has undercut the Tea Party, its champions within the GOP, and its cause of fiscal conservatism. At the same time, Williams has heralded its chief opponent Barack Obama.  

Update: Williams incessantly peppers Republicans with questions from the left during debate.

(video after the jump)

Tonight MSNBC's cast and crew will gather in Washington D.C. to celebrate their network being on the air for 15 long years. In that time its hosts, reporters and guests have attacked conservatives and Republicans on everything from impeaching Bill Clinton and conducting a war on terrorism, up to the fight over public unions. All the while some of its reporters and hosts have been thrilled by the likes of Mikhail Gorbachev and Barack Obama.

For that entire 15 years MRC analysts have been dutifully watching and noting these often outrageous outbursts of leftism from NBC News' cable outlet.

The following collection of the worst MSNBC quotes, year-by-year, is just a sampling of the Lean Forward network's decade-and-a-half long devotion to advancing the cause of liberalism under the guise of journalism.

(video compilation after the jump)

Talking to former Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw on Thursday's NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer touted low approval ratings for some newly elected Republican governors and theorized: "They went into office with messages of austerity. And now a year later, you look at their approval ratings and they're falling. Is this buyer's remorse?"

A graphic appeared on screen showing Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker with a 43% approval rating, Ohio's John Kasich at 33% and Florida's Rick Scott at 29%. Lauer failed to mention that President Obama's own approval rating stood at 43%, according to a Thursday Gallup poll, with his disapproval hitting 50%. In addition, Lauer failed to note that the source for those low Republican approval ratings, Public Policy Polling, was a Democratic polling firm.

On Thursday's NBC Today, chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd recited Obama administration spin as he gave a fully positive assessment of the President's Wednesday announcement of an Afghanistan troop withdrawal: "The President went with the most aggressive compromised withdrawal plan he could get commanders at the Pentagon to sign off on."

Moments later, Todd declared: "It was a sober sounding president, not a triumphant one, who announced from the White House that he's fulfilling his promise to begin the drawdown of U.S. forces next month." The headline on screen throughout the report touted a line from the speech that the White House was probably pleased with: "'A Position of Strength'; Obama Defends Plan For U.S. Troop Withdrawal."

In a discussion with Tom Brokaw on Tuesday's NBC Today, co-host Meredith Vieira turned to the ongoing budget fight, asking in part: "Republicans are calling for the privatization of Medicare. Could they overstepping here?" The headline on screen throughout the segment read: "Debt Diet; Do White House & GOP Spending Cuts Go Too Far?"

In response to Vieira, Brokaw actually acknowledged the importance of reform: "You know, it's hard to say. I think what we're going to do – and It's long overdue, by the way – but we're going to have a real debate about Medicare, about how it has to be reformed. You can't get to where we need to get to in all these areas just by cutting alone. There have to be profound changes in Social Security, and Medicare, and health care delivery systems."

Tom Brokaw appeared on Tuesday's Today show to offer his analysis of Barack Obama's Libya policy, as well as his sympathy for a president who has experienced more "unexpected circumstances" than any Oval Office occupant has seen in his "adult lifetime." Today co-host Matt Lauer prompted the former NBC Nightly News anchor to tell the audience what he told him right before going on air - that he couldn't "recall a time where a president has faced a confluence of events, like the confluence of events taking place right now."

Brokaw, who did qualify his response noting that FDR did have his share of "challenges," went on to specify that from the Libya crisis, to the disaster in Japan, to the budget fight he's never seen a president have it so bad, as seen in the following March 29 Today show exchange:

NBC's Tom Brokaw was invited on Thursday's Today show to discuss a wide range of topics ranging from the Supreme Court ruling on the Westboro church to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal polling results and in discussing the poll Brokaw warned Republicans risked political peril if there was another government shutdown. The former Nightly News anchor actually claimed that after the 1995 shutdown the GOP was "turned out" of the House "not too long after that." However that historic budget fight wasn't as politically lethal as Brokaw made it out to viewers, as the Republicans maintained control of the House until 2006.

(video, audio and transcript after the jump)

NBC's Today show, on Wednesday, used the occasion of two responses to Barack Obama's State of the Union speech, by Republicans Paul Ryan and Michele Bachmann, as an opportunity to portray the GOP as a party divided. Despite a historic victory by Republicans in last year's midterm elections NBC anchors, past and present, on this morning's Today show, took pains to portray the Republican Party in dire trouble with co-anchor Matt Lauer questioning if the party was "split" and "heading in different directions" and Meredith Vieira wondering if there was "a divide." Even former NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw got into the act as he claimed the GOP was locked in a "two front war" against Democrats and the Tea Party.

NBC's White House correspondent Savannah Guthrie kicked off the GOP "divide" theme when she declared "Republicans had what amounted to dueling responses" in her set-up piece to a Lauer interview with former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. In that segment Lauer pressed Giuliani "Do you worry...that as we approach the next election in 2012...that the Republican Party is split and heading in different directions," as seen in the following exchange:

It appears NBC's Matt Lauer is not happy about Barack Obama's failure to exploit the Tucson shooting to push for more gun control as on Wednesday's Today show, he seemingly expressed disappointment to former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani that the President "missed" an "opportunity" to address it in his State of the Union speech.

Lauer's anti-gun question to Giuliani came on the heels of his pushing White House senior advisor, on yesterday's show, to reveal if Obama would join current NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg in making a push for more gun control. On this morning's Today show, Lauer went even further, as he, in addition to throwing Bloomberg's words in Giuliani's face, also read directly from a Brady Center press release, as seen in the following January 26 exchange:

(video, audio and transcript after the jump)

Tom Brokaw on Thursday said that as a result of Arizona's loose gun laws, he'd be nervous going into a bar or restaurant in that state on a Saturday night.

Such was uttered during a discussion about gun control on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Former NBC Nighty News anchor Tom Brokaw visited the Today show set, on Thursday, to play referee, or more specifically daddy, in the debate surrounding the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords as he pontificated that it was "time for the parents to say time out" on the heated political rhetoric. However he then went on to question how Sarah Palin could dare to respond to all the personal attacks on her, many by some of Brokaw's colleagues on MSNBC, as he opined: "I was surprised that she waded back into it frankly."

On to discuss Barack Obama's performance at a memorial service for victims of the Tuscon shooting, Brokaw told Today co-anchor Meredith Vieira, that even though the service, as Vieira herself noticed, seemed more like a "pep rally" at times, Obama was simply doing his best to "Keep the mood of the crowd ebullient." Brokaw then scolded: "I would think that on the political, what I call the political poles, on both ends, it's probably time for the parents to say time out. You know let's, let's take a break here for a couple of days and reflect on what we've been through and where we need to go."

Later on in the segment Vieira prompted Brokaw to weigh-in on the temerity of Sarah Palin, to dare to defend herself as she asked: "Talking about pointing fingers...your views on Sarah Palin and her accusing the journalists of blood libel for blaming political rhetoric on what happened?" Brokaw responded: "I was surprised that she waded back into it frankly...I was surprised that she got back into it in the way that she did. I think we gotta move beyond that."

Appearing on Monday's "Morning Joe" on MSNBC, former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw praised Sheriff Dupnik of Pima County, Ariz. for condemning political vitriol, and wished more officials would follow suit. Dupnik, a Democrat, blamed violent political rhetoric in part for the attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), and singled out conservatives Sarah Palin and Sharron Angle for instances of unacceptable hate speech.

Brokaw thought officials have been "timid" in their criticism of violent political speech, in the wake of Saturday's shooting. "The Pima County Sheriff is not," he continued. "He is speaking out, and too few others have because they're worried about retribution."

Brokaw added that officials are hesitant to condemn hate speech because they fear sharp backlash from the public via the internet. The press is partially responsible for that fear mongering, he opined. "They're worried about the internet being lit up against them. And that's something that those of us on this side of the camera also have to be thinking about and not just be feeding that," he preached.
 

The panel on Wednesday's "Morning Joe" on MSNBC gushed over President Obama's recent legislative success, and former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw likened Obama's resurgence to Lazarus rising from the dead.

"It looked like the day after the election that [Obama] was on his way back to Chicago. Now suddenly he has arisen, Lazarus-like, again," Brokaw attested.

The disastrous mid-term elections? They are simply a distant nightmare, the panel asserted. Co-host Joe Scarborough, as well as guest columnists Mike Barnicle and Charles Blow, stated that the election results are not news anymore. "No one's talking about that anymore," remarked Blow, a New York Times columnist, over the election.