Chris Jansing

Sometimes the bias is extremely clear: A MSNBC graphic on Monday mocked GOP senatorial candidates with the headline, "American Freakshow [sic] Angle, Paul, O'Donnell: New Faces in Politics." American Freak Show is also the title of guest Willie Geist's new book on politics, but all the apparent "freaks" discussed in the piece were Republicans. Geist complained to Jansing and Co. host Chris…

Reporting that an elderly woman fainted at a West Virginia campaign appearance by former President Clinton, MSNBC ran the provocative headline "He's Still Got It," on its 10 a.m. EDT news hour. We'll leave it to the reader to guess what exactly MSNBC was getting at. President Clinton was giving a stump speech Monday for West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin, the state's Democratic nominee for the…

While the mainstream media have been in a frenzy to denounce Christine O'Donnell as a kook for her socially conservative statements on abstinence from the 1990s, the cable news networks had a perfect opportunity this afternoon to let her speak for herself. Collectively they gave her less than five minutes. The Republican Delaware Senate nominee gave a speech at the Values Voters Summit in…

MSNBC’s Morning Joe seemed to be trying very hard to avoid the Discovery Channel hostage incident on Thursday morning -- even though NBC had the exclusive of speaking with hostage-taker James Jay Lee before he was shot. With Willie Geist and Chris Jansing guest-hosting the show, they talked a lot about Middle East peace negotiations, and Hurricane Earl, and sinking Democratic midterm prospects,…

During the 3 p.m. MSNBC news hour Monday, anchor Chris Jansing asked the question and hosted an expert who supplied the seemingly desired answer. The question: Could President Obama make a mid-term comeback similar to President Reagan in 1982? The answer: Absolutely.The two discussed the similarities of the situations faced by the presidents, and seemed to conclude that if the economy turns…

During the 10 a.m. ET hour on MSNBC, anchor Chris Jansing spoke with Islamic scholar Hamza Yusuf Hanson about the Ground Zero Mosque controversy, who proclaimed: "I think there's a lot of fear....there has been a concerted effort by a certain segment. It's a very small minority, but their powerful and vocal, to demonize the Muslim community."            Yusuf was on to discuss his founding of…

More in sorrow than in anger, I'm about to record a personal blogging first: airing a gripe about Willie Geist.  When writing of the Morning Joe sidekick, my habit is to append adjectives such as "affable."   Willie is indeed a likable guy, patently comfortable in his own skin.  And while I don't suspect him of being a closet conservative, neither is he anything of a raging liberal, typically…

During live news coverage this afternoon, MSNBC's Chris Jansing demonstrated her apparent ignorance of the statistical maxim "correlation does not imply causation." Interviewing the authors of Red Families v. Blue Families, the daytime anchor gleefully reported the finding that states that voted Republican in the 2008 presidential election have higher rates of divorce, teen pregnancy, and unwed…

In the 2PM ET hour on MSNBC, anchor Tamron Hall did a news brief on Democratic Congressman Bob Etheridge assaulting two students attempting to ask him a question last week, proclaiming: "...there are some Democrats that are blasting the people allegedly behind this video....some would catagorize that as an ambush interview..." [Audio available here]Hall played a clip of the video showing the…

MSNBC reported this afternoon that Max Baucus is "blasting right-wing websites like Drudge and NewsBusters" for suggesting he was drunk on the Senate floor during the health care debate.  See P.J. Gladnick's Bizarre Baucus Behavior on Senate Floor Ignored by MSM.But MSNBC did the Montana senator no favors:1. it used his name in the same sentence with a variation on the word "blasted," and2. what'…

On Sunday's NBC Nightly News, correspondent Chris Jansing filed an unusual report which took a sympathetic look at California taxpayers who are having trouble affording a recent increase in the amount of taxes withheld from their paychecks, as she described the situation as taxpayers "footing the government an interest-free loan, and a lot of people aren't happy about it."The NBC correspondent…

After the winner of "American Idol" is crowned, the appropriate action is to congratulate the newly crowned Idol on his success. Yet on May 21 media focus was clearly elsewhere. That day, reports on all three networks' morning broadcasts, marveled at how Kris Allen beat Adam Lambert and gave unusual attention to contestants who did not win, but are still successful, leaving little doubt that…

NBC News went out of its way this time to show how the American public relies on government Dec. 10 by focusing on the public library in it's "Hard Times" series. The broadcast examined the hardships public libraries are facing in the economic downturn - at a time when people are flocking to libraries instead of the local bookstore. "These tough economic times, as we have been saying, have…

For the third weekday as Barack Obama vacations in Hawaii, John McCain on the campaign trail received more hostile coverage from the broadcast network evening newscasts -- to the extent they bothered to cover the presidential campaign. In a full story on CBS, Dean Reynolds recalled how McCain promised “to conduct a respectful campaign,” but citing McCain's celebrity ad, charged “now it frequently…