It was a year ago this weekend that the Israeli military halted its three-week campaign, Operation Cast Lead, against Hamas militants in Gaza, during which Israel had responded to thousands of rockets and mortars launched from Gaza over several years. During Israel’s military campaign, on a number of major stories, many American television newscasts were more inclined to report accusations made by U.N. or Palestinian officials that the Israeli military had acted improperly than they were to update viewers after the military held investigations and released reports disputing the accusations made against it. At one point, CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric went so far as to claim that the Israelis "may have used a banned weapon."

Below is a compilation of NewsBusters postings which document how the morning and evening newscasts on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, FNC, and PBS reported a number of major stories from the Gaza War, highlighting examples of the media either engaging in distortion or omitting relevant information that would have cast Israel in a more favorable light, including several times when the broadcast and news networks even ignored reports issued by the Israeli military after it had taken time to investigate and dispute accusations made against its troops which had previously been reported by the media.

Unemployment shot up in 2009 from 7.7 percent in January to 10.1 percent in October before settling at 10 percent in December. Behind those percentages were more than 4.1 million people who lost their jobs during the year. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, that's the most job losses in a year since 1940. (BLS could only provide data from 1940-2009)

But don't expect journalists to label President Barack Obama the worst jobs president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933-1945). The media spent 2009 trying to shield Obama from the troubling numbers.

ABC's Dr. Tim Johnson, a long-time advocate of government-centered universal health care, again shared his personal view he “absolutely” favors passage of the current ObamaCare bill, though “I would personally prefer to have public option and/or Medicare expansion directly challenging private insurance.” Without irony, about twelve minutes later as he signed off as anchor of his final newscast, Charles Gibson promised he's always tried to deliver an “objective” newscast and lamented “objectivity is not universally in favor in our business these days.”

Approaching Johnson Friday night with liberal complaints the bill has been watered down too much, Gibson related how “the question that I hear most often is, is this bill, without a public option, without an expansion of Medicare, is it better than nothing?” Johnson assured him: “Absolutely, Charlie. We have to remember that doing nothing leaves us with the status quo, a non-system that is headed for financial and health care disaster.”

Later, Gibson asserted in his goodbye comments as he retires from ABC News:

I thank you for investing trust in us each evening, trust that we will give you as objective and honest a look at the day's news as we possibly can. Objectivity is not universally in favor in our business these days, but it is critically important. It is what we strive for each night.

St. Petersburg Times media critic and Huffington Post contributor Eric Deggans offered a tribute to departing ABC World News anchor Charles Gibson, but it came with a very typical liberal slant on the 2008 campaign. Gibson had a "theatrical seriousness" in grilling Sarah Palin, but it was a "surprise" that he lowered himself in a Democratic debate to "gossipy questions like Obama’s supposed ties to William Ayers."

Since when is a man who blows up police stations and bathrooms in the Capitol qualify as a "gossipy" subject, like he’d be grist for TMZ? Deggans merely called him a onetime "radical" without any acknowledgment of his bombings. Here’s how he put it:

When he took apart vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin in a series of interviews, he could look a bit like a stern college professor -- John Houseman from Paper Chase, for anyone old enough to get the reference -- scowling over his reading glasses with a theatrical seriousness.

In his swan song interview with President Barack Obama, which consumed more than ten minutes of World News, ABC's Charles Gibson couldn't have provided a friendlier or more empathetic platform to Obama on the “weight” of sending troops to war and how “devilishly difficult” it's become to pass a health care plan because of a few rogue Senators. Gibson, set to retire Friday, teased his last Wednesday newscast:

Welcome to World News. Tonight, we broadcast from the White House. And in the headlines, one on one. Our conversation with the President in which he says he lost sleep over his decision to send more troops to Afghanistan, and makes a dire warning about health care.

That “dire warning,” which Gibson did not challenge in the interview: “If we don't pass it, here's the guarantee: the federal government will go bankrupt.”

Gibson began with Afghanistan, recalling how commanders don't “commit kids to war,” they just follow the President's orders, “and I thought, 'Holy God, what a weight that is on your shoulders.'” After Obama ruminated at length on the “gravity” of the “tough” analysis process he went through, Gibson wondered about the inner Obama: “How did you change from the beginning of that analysis and process that you went through to the end, inside you?”

Beginning his last week as anchor of ABC's World News before retiring on Friday, Charles Gibson ended his final Monday newscast by reminiscing about the political stories he's covered over his career. But he displayed distinct favoritism toward liberals over conservatives.

Gibson hailed Jimmy Carter as “always gracious in an interview” and humanized Barack Obama and Joe Biden by commiserating with their tribulations while re-playing archive clips demanding Ronald Reagan address Iran-Contra, George H.W. Bush accept he was “out of touch” and Sarah Palin explain “what insight into Russian actions...does the proximity of the state give you?” -- all before Gibson heralded Tip O'Neill as “the most memorable character” he's ever covered. (Gibson covered Capitol Hill during the late 1970s and into the 1980s.)

Gibson highlighted this question he posed to Reagan: “Once and for all, were you trading arms for hostages?” And Gibson to Bush: “There is a feeling in people's hearts that you, George Bush, are in any way out of touch?” After those questions from the archive, Gibson pulled out more favorable ones to show the “personal side” of Obama and Biden. “One of the great gifts that my mother gave to me was a positive impression of my father,” Obama maintained, prompting Gibson to empathize: “He didn't care enough to stay. How did you internalize that?” Gibson recalled Biden was “moving when he talked about the tragic death of his young daughter and first wife.”

World News anchor Charles Gibson appeared on Monday’s edition of The View to tout his own objectivity and to swear, "I'm very fond of John McCain. I carry no water for Obama." Speaking of the 2008 election, he marveled, "It was an amazing moment to say to the country that we have elected and African American as the 44th president of the United States.... It was just an amazing moment for the- for the progress of this country..." [Audio available here.]

Asked by co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck about the difficulty of maintaining objectivity, the ABC anchor, who famously grilled then-vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, piously explained, "But, you're always trying to breed that subjectivity out of anything that you may do. I've talked about this before. But, it's very controversial in my family and my children think I'm absolutely nuts. I don't vote."

Gibson said he came to this decision after becoming emotionally involved with a candidate who won his heart: "I covered a candidate once in an election and I came to care whether that candidate won or lost. And I thought, there's something wrong here and that may, in some way, permeate what you're saying on the air. And, because, I became very- I just liked the guy."

Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz presented quite a paradox in a Charlie Gibson profile Monday. The retiring ABC World News anchor said that "it’s time to move on" since objectivity is "less of a marketable commodity." But Kurtz also underlined how Gibson dared to keep airing live coverage of Ted Kennedy’s funeral until they were able to broadcast the reading of Ted Kennedy’s letter to Pope Benedict. These passages came late in the article:

Gibson worries whether broadcast networks will be able to support sizable editorial staffs in an era of declining audiences, when cable news channels are louder -- and more profitable. "Objectivity -- or the extent to which we strive for objectivity -- is less of a marketable commodity," he says. "People seem to want to hear news presented according to their own beliefs, and I don't understand that."

"I'm so much of a traditional, over-the-air broadcaster. I'm aware that it's changing, and I'm not adapting fast enough with it. Having hit the perfect arc of this business, I think it's time to move on."

ABC and CBS discounted the scientific relevance of the admissions and obfuscations displayed in the ClimateGate e-mails, but on Wednesday night they finally devoted full stories to the controversy and quoted the “most-damning” of the e-mails, the ones referring to a “trick” to “hide the decline” in a temperature measurement and in which a scientist fretted “we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can't.”

The two networks, however, painted the “stolen” e-mails not as laudatory whistle-blowing, but as an unwanted impediment to the left's global warming agenda. “Just as the world seems finally poised to do something about global warming, an inconvenient scandal,” ABC's David Wright began in playing off the title of Al Gore's movie. He despaired that “as the controversy heats up, the consensus about making the tough choices to curb carbon emissions threatens to crumble.”

On CBS, Wyatt Andrews relayed how “to many Republicans, ClimateGate proves that global warming is a deception,” before he countered: “But if that's true, it's a fraud adopted by most of the world's leading scientists, along with NASA, the U.N., the American Medical Association, and the National Academies of Science of 32 countries, including the United States. To most of them, ClimateGate is a sideshow compared to one overwhelming fact:” Viewers then were treated to this declaration from the scientist with the “hide the decline” boast: “The last decade is the warmest decade on record.”

Yet again the Thursday network evening newscasts on NBC, ABC, and CBS failed to cover the ClimateGate scandal. However, ABC World News did manage to devote a two minute story to the release of singer Susan Boyle’s first album.

[Editor's Note: Call and write the networks about this. Click here to sign the petition at our MRCAction.org Web site]

On Thursday afternoon, ABC White House correspondent Jake Tapper reported the controversy on his blog: “President Obama’s science adviser, Dr. John Holdren, faced a barrage of questions yesterday from Republican Members of Congress about a series of hacked emails at the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit that climate change skeptics have seized upon as evidence that the whole concept of climate change is a hoax.” Apparently ABC reporters are allowed to discuss the topic online, just not on air.

Interestingly, World News anchor Charles Gibson did a brief report on climate change on Thursday, about how the bad economy has reduced carbon emissions: “The government said today that one offshoot of the recession is cleaner air. Total greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. fell 2.2% last year, the decline due in part to record high oil prices, which resulted in less driving.” Gibson looked for that economic upside as he reported live outside the White House for the Obama administration’s jobs summit.

The the three broadcast network evening newscasts on Wednesday informed viewers that President Obama has decided to attend the United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen – while ignoring news of Climategate – but the NBC Nightly News uniquely devoted a full story to Obama’s intention to take part in the conference, and the prospects that America will bend to pressure from other countries in agreeing to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Anchor Brian Williams introduced the report calling global warming "one of the biggest issues facing the planet," and correspondent Anne Thompson relayed fears that "time is running out," and hopes that Obama will deliver "more than political hot air" on the issue. Thompson: "As scientists insist time is running out to combat global warming, news that President Obama will attend next month's climate talks revived hopes that Copenhagen would produce more than political hot air."

It probably won't come as any surprise, but coverage of the ClimateGate scandal, which involved the Climate Research Unit at University of East Anglia in Britain suffering a breach of data, was nowhere to be found.

Allegedly a hacker broke into the University's computer system and posted thousands of emails and documents showing an effort by scientists, some on the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), whose research has had a profound impact in shaping U.S. policy proposal on efforts to curb so-called anthropogenic climate change. Those emails and documents revealed an effort by some the scientists to manipulate data to exaggerate the threat of global warming and that has even prompted Sen. James Inhofe, Okla., the ranking Republican on the U.S. Senate's Environment and Public Works committee to call for an investigation.

Such a story would seem to be a no-brainer for the ABC, CBS and NBC to pick up on, but their Nov. 24 broadcasts failed to do so. What did they opt for instead? A sea lion glut in San Francisco, an orphaned moose in Vermont and the meal selection on the President's State Dinner. 

Long after conservatives and the American people figured it out, CBS on Monday night came to the realization President Barack Obama has a “credibility” problem fueled by the “disconnect” between Obama's promise to reduce the deficit as he pushes for massive new spending. Back in August, the CBS Evening News denigrated the town hall questioners as “unruly protests,” but on Monday reporter Chip Reid warned:

The American people are increasingly questioning the President's credibility. He says the stimulus has saved or created 640,000 jobs, but only seven percent of Americans believe it has created any. And he's repeatedly promised health care reform will not increase the deficit, but a mere 19 percent believe him.

Reid proceeded to relay how CBS News analyst John Dickerson “says for many Americans there's a basic disconnect -- a President who promises to trim the budget but only seems to want to spend and spend.” More amazing for CBS, Reid noted how “highly respected foreign policy analyst Leslie Gelb” called Obama's just-completed Asia trip “'amateur hour' for failing to get deals locked in before the President left home.”

Tuesday’s World News with Charles Gibson showed clips of an interview between Barbara Walters and Sarah Palin which will air on Friday’s 20/20. At one point, Walters seemed to allude to the fact that there is a misconception that Palin once claimed that “I can see Russia from my house,” during the 2008 campaign, as evidence of her foreign policy experience. But Walters did not clearly identify those words as part of the famous Saturday Night Live skit as they were uttered by Tina Fey playing Palin to parody what the Alaska governor had actually said in an interview with Gibson from September 2008. Walters:

On the business of “I can see Russia from my backyard,” what you did say to Charlie Gibson was that there were places in Alaska where one could see Russia. Do you still feel that Alaska’s proximity to Russia from whatever place you can see it, is significant foreign policy experience?

As Gibson and Palin discussed the conflict between Russia and Georgia, Gibson had asked last year, "What insight into Russian actions particularly in the last couple of weeks, does the proximity of this state give you?"

Former Congressman William Jefferson, the New Orleans Democrat with bribery cash hidden in his freezer, was sentenced Friday to 13 years in prison, the longest-ever for a Member of Congress on a corruption charge -- yet the CBS Evening News didn't utter a word about it, just as that newscast ignored his August conviction, while ABC's World News didn't bother to mention his party affiliation.  

NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams noted Jefferson's party in this short item: “Former Louisiana Democratic Congressman William Jefferson made headlines a while back when the FBI found $90,000 in cash hidden in his freezer. Today, he was sentenced to 13 years in prison for taking bribes.”

ABC's Charles Gibson, however, the MRC's Brad Wilmouth noticed, failed to identify Jefferson as a Democrat: “Former Louisiana Congressman William Jefferson has been sentenced to 13 years in prison for his conviction on federal bribery charges. Authorities found $90,000 wrapped in foil in Jefferson’s freezer, part of the half million dollars prosecutors say he received for using his influence to broker business deals in Africa.”

News that President Barack Obama is demanding new Afghanistan options and answers, after months and eight meetings with top officials on General Stanley McChrystal's request for more troops, led ABC anchor Charles Gibson to express exasperation Thursday night: “What new questions are there to be asked after all this time?”

CBS and NBC, however, weren't so dubious. Though Katie Couric painted “a long, drawn out process,” Chip Reid assigned gravitas to Obama as he asserted Obama “has been agonizing over this decision” and “recently immersed himself in the agony of war.” Reid touted: “That the President is so thoroughly researching such a critical decision is a good thing, according to CBS News national security consultant Juan Zarate.” Reid acknowledged that “there's great danger, he [Zarate] says, if it looks like uncertainty.”

Journalists, though, are making Obama look more deliberative than uncertain. ABC's Martha Raddatz assured Gibson that Obama “has four options in front of him” and “he wants to combine those options...to find the best option.”

World News anchor Charles Gibson admitted on Tuesday, "I worry about the lack of objectivity and the future of the news business." According to the Boston Herald, the ABC host spoke before the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce and said of Fox News and MSNBC: "I don’t like the fact that they’re delivering news based on the conviction of its viewers." He also derided some viewers who "watch news that plays to their own prejudices."

With no sense of irony, Gibson attacked Republicans for being obstructionist on health care: "It’s not being very productive to have an opposition party that simply says, ‘We are going to fight the president no matter what on health-care reform. We are not going to give you a single vote and we are going to march in lock step against you." He added that this is "not good for the country."

ABC doubled the length of its evening newscast on Friday night and World News used its second half hour to suggest an exculpatory reason behind Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan's mass killing at Fort Hood -- as anchor Charles Gibson reasoned “treating the mentally wounded can be stressful” -- then to devote a story to the plight of Muslim soldiers: “It's not easy for anyone serving in the armed forces these days, but with America fighting Islamic enemies overseas, Muslim troops face a unique burden.” Reporter Bill Weir despaired:

The Pentagon has made a real concerted effort to create a military that is culturally sensitive and religiously tolerant, but Muslims in uniform today face a challenge not seen since Japanese-Americans fought in World War II. They taste suspicion from some fellow soldiers who question their loyalty and resentment from fellow Muslims opposed to both American wars.

Weir featured a Muslim soldier who lamented “our religion teaches better,” before Weir painted Muslim soldiers as victims of intolerance, highlighting the experience of one Muslim soldier who “began his overseas deployment on 9/11, and taunts followed him throughout his four-year enlistment.”

Neither the CBS Evening News nor NBC Nightly News, in their East coast feeds Thursday night, noted the Muslim religious beliefs of the mass killer at the Fort Hood Army base in Texas, but ABC anchor Charles Gibson wasn't cowed by political correctness as he teased World News, “Fort Hood tragedy: An Army officer, a Muslim convert, is the suspect in a shooting spree...” Introducing his first story, Gibson referred to how Major Nidal Malik Hasan “an army officer, a Muslim, opened fire with handguns...” (With a range of frequency, during late afternoon/early evening coverage, CNN, FNC and MSNBC all identified Hasan as a Muslim.)

Cryptically, ABC's senior foreign affairs correspondent, Martha Raddatz, concluded a story on reaction at Fort Hood: “As for the suspect, Nadal Hasan, as one officer's wife told me, 'I wish his name was Smith.'” So, a concern this will lead to groundless fear of Muslims?

The CBS Evening News avoided any mention of Islam or Muslim faith as Katie Couric provided this benign description: “Today, according to the Army, a soldier opened fire....He's identified tonight as Army Major Nadal Malik Hasan, a licensed psychiatrist and drug and rehab specialist from Bethesda, Maryland.” NBC anchor Brian Williams: “The soldier, identified as the initial gunman here, is an Army psychiatrist, Nadal Malik Hasan. He's an officer, a Major, and he was apparently armed with two handguns.” NBC's Pete Williams insisted, the MRC's Brad Wilmouth noticed, “everything about his background is rock solid, and nothing extraordinary stands out about his background.”

Uniquely among Wednesday’s broadcast network evening newscasts, ABC’s World News with Charles Gibson informed viewers that the Israeli navy earlier in the day intercepted a record quantity of weapons supplied by Iran and destined for Hezbollah, in violation of a United Nations resolution forbidding the arming of the Lebanon-based terrorist group. Host Gibson set up the report: "Israeli navy commandos today seized a ship off the coast of Cyprus. Israel's defense ministry says it was loaded with tons of weapons bound for Hezbollah militants in Lebanon. It is the largest cache of weapons ever interdicted by the Israelis, who say the arms came from one source: Iran."

Correspondent Simon McGregor-Wood opened his report by relaying that the quantity of weapons seized was enough to "keep the Islamic radicals of Hezbollah fighting for a month." And as he concluded the report, he also gave credibility to the conservative view that Iran should not be trusted in negotiations over its nuclear program: "Today's interception won't substantially reduce Hezbollah's military power, but it strengthens Israel's warning to those trying to negotiate with Iran – including the U.S. – it can't be trusted."

Following a Monday night look at Tuesday's special election to fill New York's 23rd congressional district seat in which Republican Dede Scozzafava dropped out after falling behind the Democrat and the Conservative Party nominee, ABC anchor Charles Gibson -- instead of wondering why the GOP establishment failed to pick a candidate who upholds basic Republican principles -- delivered the usual liberal media upset over the GOP's lack of a “big tent,” a phrase you never hear when Democrats pick left-wing candidates:

A liberal Republican gets forced out of the race by a more conservative guy who was actually not a Republican, was running on the Conservative ticket. What happened to the big tent in the Republican Party?

John Berman framed the preceding story on the “moderate” Scozzafava “who supports abortion rights and the President’s stimulus plan,” around the premise that going with a conservative candidate will hurt in the long run: “A Republican drops out of a race which might guarantee Republicans keep the seat, which might be bad for the Republican party long term.” Berman concluded with how the conservative candidate, Douglas Hoffman, “says not all views are welcome” as he suggested “there's always boundaries.” To which Berman intoned: “The question for Republicans is will those boundaries become a burden?”

ABC anchor Charles Gibson on Wednesday night had time to convey President Barack Obama's praise of Edward Brooke for “breaking barriers” as the first popularly-elected black U.S. Senator, but not to inform viewers he broke that barrier as a Republican. On NBC, however, David Gregory noted Brooke's party affiliation: “The Massachusetts Republican urged the lawmakers who gathered to congratulate him to put aside partisan differences and work together.”

Neither Gibson nor Gregory pointed out that after two terms representing Massachusetts, in 1978 Brooke, a fairly liberal Republican, was challenged and beaten by one of the media's liberal heroes, the late Paul Tsongas -- a Democrat who was a white guy.

The CBS Evening News didn't mention the honor for Brooke, which was actually approved more than a year ago.

Hard to imagine that if George W. Bush were still in office journalists would hesitate a moment to invoke his name in identifying a culprit for the current shortage and delay in delivery, well beyond the schedule promised by HHS's Centers for Disease Control, of the vaccine for the H1N1 “swine flu” virus. Remember Katrina? Coverage Monday night matches what I've seen over the past several days with no mention of Obama or his administration, beyond reporting his issuance of a “national emergency” decree, as journalists instead cited “federal officials” and “the government.”

On the CBS Evening News, fill-in anchor Harry Smith reported: “Now to the H1N1 flu. Federal health officials admitted today their projected timetable for producing the vaccine was way off. They originally said there would be about 40 million doses by the end of the month. But as of today, there's less than half that number.” Subsituting on the NBC Nightly News, Ann Curry blandly announced: “President Obama declared the swine flu pandemic a national emergency over the weekend, but still the amount of vaccine to protect against it is running way behind what the government had promised.”

Conservative talk radio host Laura Ingraham on Sunday ridiculed ABC's Charles Gibson for his ignorance concerning last month's ACORN controversy.

As NewsBuster Tom Blumer reported September 15, when Gibson was asked that morning by a Chicago radio host about the Senate's decision to cut ACORN's funding over the organization's growing scandal, the ABC "World News" anchor didn't have a clue.

With this in mind, as the Roundtable discussion on Sunday's "This Week" turned to recent White House attacks on FNC, Ingraham used the Gibson incident as an example of how "of all the networks, Fox was going to hold the administration the most accountable...That's why they don't like Fox News" (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript):

Demonstrating the media never tire in coming up with new rationales to tout President Barack Obama's popularity, ABC led Monday night with a poll timed to the night before Tuesday's nine-month mark of the Obama presidency -- as if that's some kind of important anniversary, and spent as much time on how it found record low affinity for Republicans. Anchor Charles Gibson announced “the President has a 57 percent approval rating, his rating rising for the first time since April. And only 20 percent of the country now consider themselves Republican. That is the lowest level of support in 26 years.”

In “perhaps the biggest surprise,” Gibson suggested, “57 percent support one of the [health] plan's most controversial elements -- perhaps the most controversial -- a government-sponsored insurance option,” though “fewer than half those polled agree with” Obama on health care as “45 percent approve of his plans for health care reform, 48 percent opposed.”

Emphasizing Obama's popularity compared to the GOP, George Stephanopoulos relayed how “we asked Americans 'who do you trust to make the right decisions for the country's future?' 49 percent said President Obama, only 19 percent said Republicans in Congress.” Stephanopoulos also contended “one of the most interesting numbers in the poll, Charlie, the President's highest ratings on how he's handled his responsibilities as Commander-in-Chief: 57 percent.”