Political Scandals

On the Bloomberg TV show he co-hosts, John Heilemann—asked today to quantify on a scale of "1-to-Godzilla" how "dumb" politically it was of Hillary Clinton to use personal email—answered "Godzilla with Mothra riding on his back dumb."  Heilemann also revealed having reached out to former Hillary aides and that "to a person" they responded that the situation is a political "disaster." Mark…

In a Tuesday article for National Journal, senior political columnist Ron Fournier blasted Hillary Clinton over the breaking email scandal and even suggested she give up her presidential ambitions: "Perhaps Hillary Rodham Clinton shouldn't run for president....Because she doesn't seem ready for 2016. Like a blast of wintry air in July, the worst of 1990s-style politics is intruding on what needs…

In an interview with former Obama White House press secretary and current NBC political analyst Robert Gibbs on Tuesday's Today, co-host Matt Lauer saw big problems for Hillary Clinton in the wake of revelations that she used a private email account during her tenure as secretary of state: "It provides a lay-up, doesn't it Robert, for her critics who say this is all about a lack of transparency…

Late Monday night, The New York Times reported that Hillary Clinton “exclusively used a personal email account to conduct government business as secretary of state” and in turn “may have violated federal requirements that officials’ correspondence be retained as part of the agency’s record.” With a story potentially as big as this one, the question ahead of the Tuesday morning network newscasts…

On Friday evening, the Big Three networks continued their blackouts on the Thursday revelation that the Treasury Department's deputy inspector general, Timothy Camus, is conducting an "active investigation" into the "potential criminal activity" at the IRS over Lois Lerner's supposedly missing e-mails. Instead, ABC's World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, and NBC Nightly News all devoted full…

On Friday, NBC finally noticed the corruption scandal swirling around Hillary Clinton. However, the coverage on the Today show was relegated to a 49-second mention within a story slamming Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. By contrast, the morning show devoted 3 minutes 56 seconds to a social media debate about the color of a dress.  

After ABC and NBC failed to cover a front-page story in The Washington Post on Thursday morning about ethics questions surrounding the Clinton Foundation, their evening news counterparts continued the blackout by showing no interest in this story -- yet allocated nearly six minutes to efforts to catch two runaway llamas in Arizona.

Wyatt Andrews revealed the details of a new scandal at the Department of Veterans Affairs on Wednesday's CBS This Morning. Andrews zeroed in on how the veterans'  benefits office in Oakland, California simply ignored "more than 13,000 informal claims filed between 1996 and 2009 – all of which were stashed in a file cabinet." The correspondent spotlighted whistleblowers who claimed that "V.A.…

Thursday on his Your World show, host Neil Cavuto went after the Obama administration's near obsession with the coverage it gets on Fox News. While Team Obama can count on the Big Three triumvirate of ABC, CBS and NBC to toe the line, promoting its points while generally avoiding damning information, Fox has generally remained fair and balanced, an approach which has clearly gotten under their…

Politico's Mark Caputo is reporting tonight that Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz "offered to change her position on medical marijuana if a major Florida donor recanted his withering criticism of her." Now that there's a serious charge that the congresswoman pays more attention to those who shout the loudest instead of sticking to whatever core principles she…

In a rundown of the deteriorating situation in Libya in its February 23 issue, New Yorker Magazine's Jon Lee Anderson quoted "a senior (Obama) Administration official" (the capital "A" is Anderson's) who, incredibly, claimed that the country's descent into virtual chaos resulted from "the politicization" of the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack which killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and…

For seven straight shows in January of 2014, MSNBC's Chris Matthews hyperbolically compared Chris Christie's Bridgegate scandal to Watergate (with the Republican governor as the new Richard Nixon). The Hardball anchor on Friday took a victory lap while talking about Christie fading as a 2016 contender. Matthews trumpeted, " Well, does Chris Christie still have a path or a prayer to the presidency…

Late Friday afternoon, roughly two hours ("shortly after noon" Pacific Time) after the press release announcing Oregon Democratic Governor John Kitzhaber's resignation effective next Wednesday, Philip Bump at the Washington Post's "The Fix" blog tried to explain away the national press's nearly complete failure to cover Kitzhaber's mounting ethical and now potentially criminal problems for nearly…

Friday's CBS Evening News and ABC's World News Tonight both devoted less than half a minute each of air time to the resignation of the Democratic governor of Oregon, John Kitzhaber. CBS's Scott Pelley failed to provide Kitzhaber's party ID during his 20-second news brief. By contrast, ABC's David Muir gave the outgoing politician's political affiliation during his 17-second brief.