2016 Presidential

Republican National Committee spokesman Sean Spicer put on his media-critic hat on the GOP.com blog  on Thursday to complain that ABC, CBS, and NBC gave several hours more live coverage of their conventions, largely the overflow into the local-news hour at 11 pm Eastern time. The GOP says across the three networks, it drew 47 minutes of overtime, compared to 261 minutes for the Democrats. Our…

Wednesday night's coverage of protests outside the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia delivered by Fox Business Network and the Associated Press could hardly have differed more. FBN reported "thousands" of angry protesters oustide who were in no way mollified by Bernie Sanders' endorsement of Hillary Clinton or calls for unity. Geoff Mulvhill and Megan Trimble at the AP only …

In a few months, Barack Obama will become the fifth post-World War II president to serve two full terms. The Washington Monthly’s Martin Longman thinks Obama tops the other four in terms of “popularity and moral credibility,” as indicated not only by the positive reception Obama got for his Wednesday-night DNC speech boosting Hillary Clinton, but by the public’s curiosity beforehand about what he…

Remarks by Hillary Clinton about her use of a private email server she made during last Sunday's edition of CBS's 60 Minutes program have now come back to haunt her as the Judicial Watch organization has filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Democratic presidential candidate. According to an article by Rachel Stockman of the Mediaite website, the conservative watchdog group “has…

A group of D-List celebrities gathered on Netflix’s Chelsea to discuss their time on NBC’s The Celebrity Apprentice with Donald Trump and "commiserate" about "Trump f*cking up the country." 

Bashing Trump presumably took on a whole new meaning at a recent DC party where a “trumpiñata” was sighted. Yet, apparently, Politico did found that other news “trumped hate,” as coverage of the whackable Trump caricature was only briefly mentioned far down the page.    Democratic Party political strategist and former State Rep. Vin Roberti and his wife Amy hosted a “midnight breakfast” along…

How enthusiastic is the Democratic Party about abortion? So enthusiastic that Snopes.com felt compelled to debunk a satire story stating that former Philadelphia abortionist and convicted murderer Kermit Gosnell addressed the DNC by video from prison. Yes, that was satire. However, considering other DNC incidents, it’s easy to see why the fake story was convincing. In what Yahoo News called a “…

Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and every other presidential candidate in history were pikers compared to Hillary Clinton when it comes to experience. That, at least, was the determination of historian Doris Kearns Goodwin when she appeared, on Friday’s CBS This Morning, for a panel discussion about the historic importance of Clinton’s nomination. This Morning co-anchor Norah O’Donnell asked the…

On Friday’s NBC Today, correspondent Stephanie Gosk devoted a full report to hyping concerns that Russia could somehow rig the U.S. presidential election in November. In the wake of the hacking of Democratic National Committee e-mails, Gosk warned viewers: “The incident is raising new questions about the security of our country's overall electoral system. Could voting booths or voting tallies…

This week’s Philadelphia convention is playing host to a string of Democratic speakers promising to alter the First Amendment, to give government more control over who can engage in politics. “The Intimidation Game,” tells the story behind those calls.  

With both the Republican and Democratic conventions now concluded, it’s time to judge the news media on how fairly they covered the two parties. Media Research Center analysts looked at various aspects of coverage, all of which demonstrate that journalists obviously favored the Democratic gathering.

The ultimate night of the Democratic National Convention saw the coronation of Hillary Clinton as the first female presidential nominee, celebrated on whole top half of the front page of Friday's New York Times. Meanwhile, Patrick Healy and Amy Chozick did their best to both humanize and historicize Hillary, "who sacrificed personal ambition for her husband’s political career and then rose to be…

Hillary Clinton’s speech on Thursday was a test of the media’s honesty. If you presented the speech itself as a wonderful oration, then you’re clearly reading from the DNC press release. If you’re acknowledging, hedging, that Hillary is no Obama-raising-the-oceans orator, then you’re acknowledging the political reality outside the DNC-staff bubble. CBS stayed inside the bubble on Thursday night…

After the networks spent the morning going crazy over Clinton’s "emotional" and "historic" Thursday night speech at the DNC, the cable news shows proved they couldn’t get enough either on Friday morning. Carol Costello on CNN’s Newsroom, provided one of the more over-the-top examples from the media’s fan club, calling Clinton women's "white knight."