Foreign Policy

On Tuesday, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and the Democratically controlled Senate Intelligence Committee released a controversial report detailing the CIA’s enhanced interrogation program used against suspected terrorists in the years after 9/11. The report has drawn criticism from Republicans and many in the intelligence community but on ABC’s The View, co-host Whoopi Goldberg offered up a…

On Monday night, ABC News continued to report on the impending release of a report on the CIA’s post-9/11 interrogation methods as though partisanship had no role when, in fact, Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee are the very reason it was compiled and will be released.                                          Following a morning in which ABC’s Good Morning America and NBC’s Today …

Has John Heilemann ever gotten this riled up over the commies ruling Cuba? If so, I missed it. But on his Bloomberg TV show tonight, Heilemann got on his populist high horse to blast the British monarchy on the occasion of the visit to the US of Prince William and Princess Kate, mocking them as "undereducated" and calling for the British monarchy to be "done away with tomorrow." In Heilemann's…

During an NBC News special report on President Obama nominating Pentagon official Ashton Carter be the next secretary of defense, Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd advanced White House talking points that the President really wanted someone who would challenge the administration on foreign policy: "...they claim they want him to be more confrontational with the White House national security…

Talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations: Alex Wagner has made the case that Barack Obama is no kind of emperor or dictator . . . compared to Kim Jong Un, the brutal ruler of perhaps the world's worst regime, North Korea. Wagner was riffing off the news that Kim has banned North Korean parents from naming their children Jong Un and ordered those already bearing the name to change it.  …

The Esquire pundit claims that “every militarized halftime show, every Concert for Valor, every local television anchor wearing a flag pin or a yellow ribbon, is testimony to how the Pentagon has transformed the country from a skeptical republic to a sentimental beer commercial.”

On Wednesday night, ABC became the only major broadcast network to not have covered the controversy over President Obama’s choice to name former soap opera producer and Obama reelection campaign bundler Colleen Bell the new United States Ambassador to Hungary.  The network’s zero coverage of this story came more than a day after ABC’s own chief White House correspondent, Jonathan Karl, grilled …

On Monday, ABC News chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl grilled White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest on what exactly did Obama campaign donor and former soap opera producer Colleen Bell have in terms of qualifications for becoming the U.S. Ambassador to Hungary. When it came to ABC’s World News Tonight with David Muir mentioning or playing video of that exchange on Monday evening,…

Sometimes, one has to remember that op-ed writers don't always get to pick their headlines, though I would hope that they're allowed to register their objections. So it's not clear that Los Angeles Times guest blogger Joel Silberman is responsible for the headline at his Monday blog post about how, or even whether, to deal with relatives who disagree with you politically on Thanksgiving. But…

It's amazing how any reporter can cover the deepening economic crisis in Venezuela without saying a word about how the country got there. But Associated Press reporter Hannah Dreier was up to the task. In a bizarre, sickening November 20 report on how its people are having to get "creative" in the face of chronic shortages of basic goods to get by, she acted as if those shortages — and the over…

The New York Times continued its annoying, Winston Smith-like habit of rewriting history in virtually real time yesterday. Helene Cooper's original Monday afternoon report on Chuck Hagel's sacking as Secretary of Defense is no longer available at the Times. However, since I anticipated that the paper would conduct a comprehensive cleanup yesterday when I posted on the paper's original coverage,…

One blogger argued that media outlets which took the story seriously should “spend the next three-plus years publishing articles [or] airing pieces” telling the public that it was “a cynical and spiteful lie from the beginning.”

As is the case with so many executive changes in both the public and the private sector, there is vagueness in the circumstances surrounding the end of Chuck Hagel's stint as Obama administration Secretary of Defense. While it's not unusual for an exec to be asked to resign to avoid being formally fired, which was apparently the case with Hagel, the higher-ups involved are usually smart enough…

Chuck Todd, NBC News Political Director and moderator of Meet the Press, spoke with Senators Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) on Sunday to discuss a variety of issues including President Obama’s recent executive action on immigration as well as the Benghazi terrorist attack. After discussing immigration for the majority of the interview, Todd brought up a new House Intelligence…