Syria

Top of the news: Our architecture critic weeps over Aleppo? Indeed, the front of Thursday’s New York Times featured critic a “Critics Notebook” from Michael Kimmelman, “Aleppo’s Faces Beckon to Us, To Little Avail.” Staggeringly, Kimmelman managed to lament the tragedy in Aleppo on the front page of a major newspaper, without a single mention of President Barack Obama, the sitting president for…

As Aleppo descends into chaos and death, the journalists at NBC and ABC on Wednesday avoided singling out Barack Obama’s foreign policy. Instead, NBC focused on the present and said America is “powerless” to do anything.  It was only CBS This Morning that hosted a discussion on culpability of Barack Obama’s inaction. Talking to Republican strategist Dan Senor, co-host Charlie Rose wondered if the…

After an episode about the illegal detention of Muslims, the ABC drama Designated Survivor has now moved on to the cause of championing the rights of Syrian refugees. They’ll take any excuse to lecture on Islamophobia after an Islamic terrorist attack. (Although, the way the show is going, it’s going to turn out to be some evil cabal of rich white conservative men who planned the attack that…

This latest edition of "Stupid Fact Checks" by Hillary Clinton lapdogs in the press comes from NBC, with follow-up help from the Politico, and is an entry in two categories: "False Equivalency" and "Subsequent Goalpost Moving." In Sunday's second presidential debate, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump correctly stated that Mrs. Clinton "was there as Secretary of State with the so-called…

Shortly after the conclusion of Sunday's second presidential debate, in reaction to Trump's statement that "Assad is killing ISIS," the AP tweeted: "Trump wrong that Syria's Assad is fighting Islamic State militants." There's one insurmountable problem with that statement, namely that, as PJ Media's Patrick Poole noted, "recent AP reporting documented fighting between the Syrian regime and ISIS…

The AP claimed in a Monday "fact check" that "Trump [is] wrong that Assad fights IS." However, this headline put it more bluntly than their write-up, which asserted that the billionaire's claim about the Syrian dictator is "only partially true...Assad considers the Islamic State group to be among numerous "terrorist" groups....Assad does use air power against IS-held areas and his ground forces…

Apparently Kurtis Lee and Seema Mehta at the Los Angeles Times have access to a special Newspeak news media version of the dictionary which contains a definition of "misleading" differing from the real dictionary: "deceptive; tending to mislead" ("mislead" as a verb primarily means "to lead or guide wrongly; lead astray"). They're using their Newspeak definition to claim that a completely factual…

If you watched most of Wednesday's New Day show on CNN, one thing that was clear is that co-host Chris Cuomo is just itching to see GOP vice presidential nominee Mike Pence challenged from the left on gay rights as he repeatedly brought up the issue -- mostly in the first couple of hours of the special four-hour edition of the show -- commenting on the topic six times in all. Perceiving Governor…

As the Republican National Committee's Sean Spicer appeared as a guest on Tuesday's New Day, co-host Chris Cuomo pressed him over Republican attacks against Democratic running mate Tim Kaine's record on crime, and his history of involvement as a missionary with a priest in Honduras with marxist leanings. Cuomo dismissively invoked the Willie Horton ads from the 1988 presidential candidate as…

As Libertarian vice presidential nominee Bill Weld appeared as a guest on Monday's New Day, co-host Chris Cuomo repeatedly pressed him over whether his candidacy with Gary Johnson as presidential nominee was hurting Hillary Clinton to the benefit of Donald Trump. Even after Weld argued that he believes that mostly moderate Republicans are planning to vote for the Libertarian ticket, Cuomo pressed…

In the episode "A Bitter Draught," ABC's Once Upon a Time has a refugee crisis that in many ways reflects our own. 

On Tuesday's New Day, CNN co-host Chris Cuomo not only showed a double standard in aggressively debating GOP Rep. Sean Duffy on the issue of restricting immigration from Muslim countries while going more softly on Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison, but he also tried to downplay the odds of refugees committing terrorist acts as he misleadingly recalled the findings of the libertarian CATO Institute on…

The networks finally notices the presidential candidacy of Libertarian Gary Johnson, when it can show him stumbling. The New York Times jumped on to his "Aleppo" flub with two left feet -- only to fall flat on its face as well. Times reporter Alan Rappeport filed the giddily hostile “‘What Is Aleppo?’ Libertarian Presidential Candidate Asks in an Interview Stumble.” The text box was unyielding: “…

It was just a matter of time before the piling-on from denizens of MSNBC's Morning Joe after Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson's goofy Aleppo gaffe caught up with someone else on the show. Johnson drew a blank in response to MJ regular Mike Barnicle's gotcha question, a flub that quickly went viral and dominated discussion during the rest of Thursday's broadcast.