Foreign Policy

It must be nice for a major news network to self-congratulate itself by bringing on someone to give them an award. Such was the case on Wednesday April 3, when “CBS This Morning” brought on Charlayne Hunter-Gault and Ira Glass to present co-host Charlie Rose with a Peabody Award for an interview he conducted with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. Hunter-Gault hyped the “surprise” she had for…

Pushed back from the headlines, massive protests against the repressive Nicolas Maduro regime in Venezuela continue. So do the killings by the "colectivos." If this group of thugs enforcing Maduoro's Chavista socialist nightmare were instead right-wing paramilitary types, they would long since have been christened "death squads" and garnered international attention. A story about the…

Appearing on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, The Washington Post’s David Ignatius did his best to shill for President Obama following the president’s interview with CBS anchorman Scott Pelley. Speaking with moderator Bob Schieffer on Sunday, Ignatius opined, “It's crucial for statesmen to try to see the world as their adversaries see it” while urging President Obama to see the world…

Friday's CBS Evening News featured a previously unaired portion of Scott Pelley's softball interview of President Obama on his recent meeting with Pope Francis. The Vatican noted on Thursday that "there was a discussion on questions of particular relevance for the Church...such as the exercise of the rights to religious freedom, life and conscientious objection" – a reference to the Catholic…

Brickbats to Phillip Rawls and his layers of editors at the Associated Press. Vietnam war hero and former Alabama Senator Jeremiah Denton died on Friday. He was an incredibly courageous and inspiring man who after his return from 7-1/2 years as a POW in North Vietnam became deeply troubled at where this nation was (and still is) headed. Unsurprisingly, he became a strong pro-life and family…

On Wednesday night, Tavis Smiley welcomed film director Errol Morris onto the set of his PBS program to talk about Morris’ new documentary on former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Unlike Bill Maher, who challenged Morris when he interviewed him last Friday, Smiley joined Morris in maligning Rumsfeld throughout the entire interview. [Video below. MP3 audio here.] Smiley seemed appalled…

Without a hint of irony, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews savaged “flunker” Mitt Romney on Wednesday for his criticism of President Obama’s foreign policy. “These Republicans, Romney, Rumsfeld, remind me of kids who flunked out of high school but come back to tap on the classroom windows,” Matthews sneered. “They're only there to get attention and otherwise disrupt those that are trying to learn. Got…

It’s been nearly a week but it seems that someone in the press finally noticed the lack of American media traveling with Mrs. Obama across China. The Washington Post’s Krissah Thompson, who just yesterday gushed over the first lady’s trip, finally acknowledged in a March 26 piece that American media were shut out from the first lady's press pool.  Despite Thompson’s admission, the Post buried…

At President Barack Obama's press conference in The Hague, Netherlands today, as part of a much longer question, ABC's Jonathan Karl asked Obama whether "Mitt Romney had a point when he said that Russia is America’s biggest geopolitical foe? If not Russia, who?" It's important to note that Obama's response to that portion of Karl's question pertained to and was directed at Romney. A video…

While on Tuesday evening the networks hyped President Obama "talking tough" to Russia and "belittling" them, only ABC pressed him on whether he was wrong about Russia during the 2012 campaign. ABC's White House correspondent Jonathan Karl asked the President, "In the light of recent developments, do you think Mitt Romney had a point when he said that Russia is America's biggest geopolitical…

A search on the name of James Risen (not in quotes) returns nothing relevant at the Associated Press. All that comes back at the Politico is a link to a post yesterday at Dylan Byers' On Media Blog containing one pertinent sentence: "James Risen slams the Obama administration." Whoopee. Risen is the Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist for The New York Times who has been in the Obama…

First Lady Michelle Obama is wrapping up her tour of China sans the American press. Despite American media being shut out from the visit, Mrs. Obama has received glowing coverage of her trip, most recently from The Washington Post’s Krissah Thompson. Writing on Tuesday’s March 25, Thompson puffed up “History and jump-rope as first lady visits Xi’an” before providing a glowing description of…

On Monday's New Day, CNN's John King refreshingly spotlighted one of President Obama's key campaign promises from 2008 about foreign policy during a discussion about how to respond to Russia's aggression in Crimea. King wondered if "a President who came to office saying he could unite the world and would have better international diplomacy than George W. Bush – at least on this one, doesn't…

Former presidential candidate Mitt Romney had some harsh words for President Obama over his handling of the crisis in Ukraine. Appearing as a guest on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday March 24, Governor Romney reaffirmed statements he made during the 2012 election that Russia was America’s number one geopolitical foe by reiterating that we “really need to understand that Russia has very…