Political Scandals

On Friday's Wolf show on CNN, as they updated viewers on the Hillary Clinton email scandal, substitute host Dana Bash and correspondent Evan Perez began by downplaying the classified emails in question as mostly "innocuous" but ended up conceding that the Clinton campaign's "legal argument" in her defense is "not enough of an answer."

All you need to know about the Associated Press's interest in accurately reporting current developments in the investigations into 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's private email server is this: A search at its national site on "Hillary crime" (not in quotes) returns nothing. Ken Thomas's coverage of the former Secretary of State's "forceful defense" last night in "a…

How about "angry and lame?"  After playing a clip of Hillary in Iowa yesterday in which she addressed the email scandal and took a shot at Donald Trump, MSNBC's Richard Wolffe, sitting in for Steve Kornacki, called her comments "feisty and funny." Have a look and judge for yourself. There's a difference between feisty and flat-out angry. As for funny, Rodney Dangerfield can rest in peace.…

Moving on? ABC's Good Morning America on Friday skipped the latest bombshell revelation in Hillary Clinton's e-mail scandal, the news that her communications on a private server included talk about top secret CIA drones. The program instead hyped irrelevant stories throughout the two hour program. NBC's Today mentioned the AP report on the topic, but during a larger segment on whether Al Gore…

CNN senior Washington correspondent Jeff Zeleny had some fawning words during Thursday’s Anderson Cooper 360 for Vice President Joe Biden as he continues to mull a 2016 presidential campaign, referring to him as a “generally excellent” campaigner with an “authenticity that is really being craved in this election cycle.” As part of a segment on the possible run by Biden, host Anderson Cooper asked…

Was our restaurant table bugged?  Last night over date-night dinner, my wife, a perspicacious observer of the political scene and, yes, a Bernie backer, said she sensed that Hillary's moment had passed and that people were tired of her. Cut to today's Morning Joe, and there were Donny Deutsch, Joe Scarborough and an initially reluctant Mika Brzezinski saying much the same thing: that powerful,…

After ABC, CBS, and NBC devoted portions of their Thursday morning newscasts to the FBI taking control of Hillary Clinton’s e-mail server, the picture was far different on Thursday night as ABC, NBC, Telemundo, and Univision moved on from this scandal and neglected to mention it. The CBS Evening News, however, found it pertinent to continue keeping their viewers abreast of Clinton’s e-mail…

The “big three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC continued to cover on Wednesday night news that scandal-ridden Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton turned over her private e-mail server and numerous thumb drives to the FBI but largely brushed it off as “a headache” and “distraction” for Clinton in what has “been a tough summer.”

The bombshell news that Hillary Clinton will finally turn over her private e-mail server, as well as the confirmation that her electronic communications as Secretary of State included top secret material, warranted a mere nine and half minutes on Wednesday's network morning shows. This is out of a combined eight hours on NBC, CBS and ABC. ABC's Good Morning America offered the least, a scant one…

Partisanship oozing out of Howard Dean's wherever! On today's Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski, exasperated by Howard Dean's dead-ender defense of Hillary on the email scandal, told him "your partisan whatever is just ooz[ing.]" You know Hillary is in hot water when even Andrea Mitchell had to report that there are "big" problems for Clinton on the email front. But Howard Dean has apparently decided…

According to CNN Money’s Tom Kludt late Tuesday night, NBC News confirmed that the disgraced former NBC Nightly News anchor’s six-month suspension has ended and will be returning sometime next month. Kludt reported that “NBC told CNNMoney on Tuesday that Williams will assume his new role as a breaking news anchor for MSNBC in mid-September, but no date has been set.”

On Tuesday night, ABC’s World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News ignored a new development in the growing Hillary Clinton e-mail scandal with news just prior to the newscasts that two of Clinton’s e-mails were found to have been “top secret” by the intelligence community’s inspector general. Meanwhile, the CBS Evening News was only able to scour together a 27-second news brief on the story while…

After all three major broadcast networks covered on Wednesday morning news that the FBI is investigating Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server, ABC and NBC moved on from it by the time their evening newscasts rolled around to instead award nearly two minutes to the Cecil the lion story. Joining ABC’s World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News in the blackout of this development was Spanish-…