FX’s The Americans Returns Tonight; Last Season: Reagan ‘Chicken H

Season 2 debuts tonight of The Americans, the FX drama centered around husband and wife KGB undercover agents (Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell as “Philip and Elizabeth Jennings”) who live with their kids as ordinary Americans in suburban Washington, DC when Reagan becomes President.  In the next to last episode of the first season, at a scene in a restaurant sometime in 1982, a source tells “…

Given Ukraine, Mika Blasts People Making Money at Olympics—But Omit

What's missing from this list of people Mika Brzezinski blasted on today's Morning Joe for "making a lot of money at the Olympics" while Vladimir Putin's suppression of democracy in the Ukraine unfolds: "the people performing there, the people competing there, the people sponsoring there"? Did somebody say NBC, Mika's own parent network? Give that guy a gold medal!  To whom does Mika think "…

NBC's Brokaw: U.S. Anti-Communism Efforts During Cold War A 'National

During NBC's Saturday coverage of the Winter Olympics, former NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw spun the United States' worldwide campaign against communism during the Cold War: "In Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, and space, the U.S. spared little to defeat communism – at times, it seemed like a national obsession." [video below the jump] Brokaw's slanted take on recent history came mere days after…

NBC: Moscow's Subway System Is Stalin's 'Palace for the People

In a report aired on Monday's NBC Today from the Sochi Olympic games, correspondent Stephanie Gosk toured the Russian capital: "Moscow evokes powerful images. The Kremlin, Soviet leaders, the Red Army. But beyond the Cold War symbols, this city of 10 million people is a modern bustling metropolis..." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump] Later in the segment, Gosk described…

Outrageous: Russian TV Anchor Mocks Iwo Jima Memorial As Homoerotic In

The London Daily Mail reported this week that “CNN caused a firestorm when it included a war monument in Brest, a city in the former Soviet republic of Belarus, in an article on the 'world's ugliest monuments' published last month.” This isn’t Ted Turner’s CNN, where a reporter would be disciplined for saying the word “foreign” in a sentence. The online article from a travel-piece contributor…

Report: NBC Sliced Out Olympic Official's Anti-Russia Slam in Opening

For any media critic keeping score on whether NBC is cutting corners to be kind to help their Russian hosts, the sports-journalism blog Deadspin reports that International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach made a statement during the Opening Ceremonies that included a not-so-veiled punch at the Russians and their speech-squashing “gay propaganda” law, telling the athletes it’s possible to…

NBC Glorifies Russia's Soviet Past as 'One of Modern History's Pivotal

NBC whitewashed Russia's communist legacy in the lead segment of its Friday broadcast of the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Sochi. Game of Thrones actor Peter Dinklage narrated the network's lionization of the largest country by land mass: "Russia overwhelms. Russia mystifies. Russia transcends. Through every stage of its story, it's resisted any notion of limitation. Through…

Security Expert: NBC Deceptively Edited Story to Make Sochi Hacking Th

A cyber security expert featured on the February 4 NBC Nightly News is alleging that producers edited the story in such a way as to sensationalize the threat that tourists at the Olympic Games in Sochi face from hackers. Hadas Gold of Politico has the story in a piece at the paper's On Media blog:

NBC’s Olympic-Sized Bias: 13 Times More Coverage to Russian Anti-Gay

Matt Philbin
Journalists love to preen as human rights watchdogs, congratulating themselves publicly for their roles – real or imagined – in securing the life and liberty of the downtrodden. That is, as long as it’s the right sort of downtrodden.  Take, for example, NBC’s coverage in the run up to the Sochi Winter Olympics. Because of Russian restrictions on gays’ free speechfor homosexuals, the official…

Networks Skirt Tying Russian Bombings to Islam

Islamic terrorists were suspected in the terrorist bombings that just killed dozens in Russia.  But reporters at ABC, NBC and CBS went out of their way to avoid the obvious connection or even to call the suspects “terrorists,” preferring instead the squishy word “militant.” Friday, Sunday and Monday, three separate suicide bombings left at least 37 people dead in the Volgograd and Pyatigorsk…

NBC's Lauer Urges U.S. Olympic Athlete to Stage Gay Protest During Soc

While interviewing openly gay U.S. women's hockey team player Caitlin Cahow on Thursday's NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer hoped for controversy during the games over Russia's "anti-gay laws": "[Openly gay former tennis player] Billy Jean King said that perhaps it is time for a 'John Carlos moment'....that moment in 1968 in Mexico City [Olympics] when [U.S. runners] John Carlos and Tommy Smith…

For Sochi Olympics, NBC Hires Soviet Union Apologist Who Called Its

Earlier this week, NBC Sports announced that "Moscow-based TV journalist Vladimir Posner (also frequently spelled "Pozner") will be a correspondent for NBC Olympics’ late-night show with Bob Costas during the Sochi Games." To call Posner's background "problematic" is like saying that Bob Filner, former Democratic Mayor of San Diego, has a bit of a problem with how he treats members of the…

NYT Op-Ed: Dallas 'Willed the Death' of JFK

The left will never get over the fact that Lee Harvey Oswald, a self-described Marxist who had previously claimed to be a communist, assassinated John Fitzgerald Kennedy on November 22, 1963. The latest evidence of that detachment from reality came online Saturday evening at the New York Times, and appeared in today's print edition. Writer James McAuley, described as "a Marshall scholar…

NPR Bemoans 'Stronghold of Traditional Values and Religious Beliefs' i

Friday's All Things Considered made it clear that NPR is not just one-sided when it comes to the domestic agenda of left-wing homosexual activists, but it also slants toward them with foreign issues. Correspondent Michele Kelemen boosted a collaboration between visiting members of the "Rakurs" LGBT group from Russia and their American counterparts in Washington, DC and Maine. Kelemen zeroed…