Britain

Maybe it was those college courses on the history of Europe that soured me on the idea of a united continent. How could a conglomeration of nation states noted for invading each other, pillaging and warring against each other form a union? How could a continent with different languages, cultures and money become a united states of Europe modeled after the USA?

Writing on The Washington Post’s Wonkblog early Monday morning, writer Emily Badger bemoaned the June 23 vote by the United Kingdom (U.K.) to leave the European Union (E.U.) as an example of a bad referendum because it gave voters power to decide something that involved “thorny debates we elect government officials to hash out.” 

Journalists on all three networks on Monday continued to howl with outrage over Britain’s decision to exit the European Union. Reporters on ABC, CBS and NBC attacked the “worst decision” that could lead to “economic disaster.” On the Today show, analyst Jim Cramer assailed, “In terms of the financial chaos and collapse, it’s just one of the worst moves I’ve seen.”

On Sunday’s ABC roundtable on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, MSNBC pundit and New York Times contributor Michael Eric Dyson argued with conservative panelists, CNN’s Alex Castellanos and FNC’s Greta Van Susteren over Brexit and how it paralleled with Trump’s appeals to “white racist supremacist nationalism.” By contrast, Dyson stated, Hillary Clinton appealed to America’s “best ideals” and…

They should have known better, but it was apparently too good to check. Following the lead of the apparently shellshocked BBC, the Associated Press on Friday night included an item in its "The Latest" timeline on Great Britain's Thursday vote to leave the European Union about how "So many users are signing a petition for a re-run of Britain's referendum on European Union membership that they've…

An example of how unhinged press bias builds on itself was on display Sunday morning on CNN's Inside Politics. Associated Press reporter Lisa Lerer told other panel members who were criticizing Hillary Clinton for her lack of an in-person public statement on the the results of Thursday's Brexit referendum that they should doubt the legitimacy of the result. She did so by referring to "all the…

Some of the endless Brexit-result bashing from the New York Times on Saturday got personal. In her “reporter’s notebook," European culture correspondent Rachel Donadio didn’t hide her contempt for the “open xenophobia” and evident ignorance of the Leave side: "This week, it wasn’t Greece that was kicked out. It was Britain that voted to leave, after a campaign of open xenophobia." Also, White…

Though the Brexit debate didn’t break down along ideological lines, some liberal writers focused their morning-after scorn on pro-Leave conservatives. Talking Points Memo editor and publisher Josh Marshall wrote that American conservatives rooted for Brexit because of “the same turn back…the clock to glory nonsense that animates Trumpism…American conservative glee [over Brexit] is just a retreat…

Reacting to the shocking news of Great Britain’s decision to exit the European Union, UK-born Fox Business Network anchor Stuart Varney responded to “fearmongering” and offered an explanation of the voters’ discontent. “The British have become increasingly frustrated by being ruled, essentially, in many aspects of their lives by an alien, foreign bureaucracy. Notably the bureaucrats in Brussels…

NPR's Asma Khalid made it clear in a series of posts on Twitter during the evening/early morning after the Brexit vote that she opposed the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union. Khalid initially expressed her shock after the British television network ITV projected that there was an 80 percent probability that 'Leave' would win. She later spotlighted a British Muslim's Tweet that…

On Friday’s NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer observed that Britain’s vote to leave the European Union “would appear in the short term...[to be] a victory for Donald Trump and his political world view over Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and their political world view.” He turned to Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd and wondered: “Does Donald Trump get a bump out of this?”

All three morning shows on Friday led with the “stunning” vote by Britain to exit the European Union, a move that is “rocking” the world. Yet, only ABC’s Good Morning America ignored the inconvenient fact that Barack Obama tried and failed to influence the vote this past spring. On CBS This Morning, Charlie Rose reminded, “President Obama visited in April and urged voters to stay in Europe.” 

The View Friday morning discussed Britain voting to leave the European Union, thereby declaring its own independence. The news brought shocks of outrage from liberal media worldwide, that even the women at The View felt informed enough to weigh in on. There was no room for nuance at the table, as Joy Behar called the situation, “the whole world falling apart” and CNN’s Sunny Hostin lamented how…

The UK’s surprising decision to exit the European Union brought out typical sneering from journalists, as well as warnings that the decision would bring doom and gloom to the country. Business Insider Finance Editor Lianna Brinded warned Britain was “beyond repair,” and the worst was “yet to come.”