NBC's Mitchell Upset at Palin's Millions Now, Celebrated Bill Clinton

NBC's Andrea Mitchell, on Thursday's Today show, delivered a snarky piece about Sarah Palin "making millions on books" and "highly paid speeches"going as far to portray the former Republican Alaskan governor as a diva who demands a Lear jet and "bendable straws" for her water bottles at appearances. However Mitchell was singing a different tune back in 2001 when a former Democratic officeholder,…
Geoffrey Dickens
April 15th, 2010 1:17 PM

News Coverage of April's Economic Data Sounds More Like April Fools

Whenever you are bored or in need of a good laugh, help yourself to some mainstream media coverage of the economy under President Obama. Each month we at NewsBusters wonder how the recession will be spun anew, and each month news outlets act with increasing hilarity. First up for April was an earnest little piece by USA Today writer Matt Krantz published Thursday. Krantz insisted on reporting "…
Candance Moore
April 15th, 2010 1:07 PM

HuffPo Columnist Calls for Pope's Arrest

Another day another anti-religion piece from Huffington Post Religion. On April 14 columnist Derek Beres wrote “Why Arresting the Pope is a Great Idea.” Not only that, but Beres actually compared Pope Benedict to director Roman Polanski, who raped a young girl. He also, of course, couldn’t resist ranting against the Church’s teachings on priests remaining celibate. Atheists Richard Dawkins and…
Sarah Knoploh
April 15th, 2010 1:01 PM

After More Than A Year, CBS 'Early Show' Does First Full Story on Tea

While the tea party movement began to take shape in late February of 2009, the CBS Early Show did not offer a complete story on it until nearly 14 months later, with co-host Harry Smith declaring: "Today is tax day, April 15th. And thousands of tea party activists are headed to Washington...a new CBS News/New York Times poll is showing us just who these passionate conservatives really are."…
Kyle Drennen
April 15th, 2010 12:58 PM

Live-tweeting Tax Day Tea Parties

Are you attending a Tea Party today? Update NB readers on the latest from your local rally using our custom hashtag "#NBtea". All tweets will be displayed below the fold.Citizen journalism will be absolutely vital today, given the presence of the so-called Tea Party Crashers, and the predictable hostility of the legacy media. Share your experiences and your video and pictures with the NB…
NB Staff
April 15th, 2010 12:33 PM

Newsweek's Ben Adler Slams 'Stupid Idea' of Putting 'Tax' On Homeless

Combining bleeding heart bluster with soak-the-rich envy, Newsweek's Ben Adler savaged liberal billionaire New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in an April 14 The Gaggle blog post for his green-lighting city homeless shelters to levy a monthly rent on residents who hold down jobs:Don't complain about your taxes today, they are surely less than the 44 percent of one's income that homeless New…
Ken Shepherd
April 15th, 2010 12:29 PM

MSNBC's Savannah Guthrie Sympathizes With Michelle Obama: Did 'Ugly' S

MSNBC's Savannah Guthrie on Thursday conducted a sycophantic interview with Michelle Obama, urging the First Lady to complain about the "uglier side" of the health care debate. The Daily Rundown co-host sympathetically asked, "There was a lot of vitriol, some pretty hateful things said. And I wondered what your feeling was about that?" [Audio available here.]Guthrie continued, "Was it hard to…
Scott Whitlock
April 15th, 2010 12:27 PM

'More Americans Say Their Taxes Fair' Poll Ignores More Americans Don

There's a new CBS News poll getting a lot of attention the past few days claiming that more Americans believe their taxes are fair today than did in 1997.Unfortunately, the coverage ignores why this likely is the case: the percentage of Americans that don't pay taxes has doubled since 1997.As such, it makes sense that more folks feel their taxes are fair.Such logic wasn't included in CBSNews.com'…
Noel Sheppard
April 15th, 2010 11:55 AM

AP Item on Tea Party's 'Extremist' Concerns Recycles Racial Slurs Myth

Soooo predictable, Item 2 (Item 1 from earlier this morning at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog). Reporting from Jefferson City, Missouri, David Lieb of the Associated Press understated the number of people expected to attend rallies through the US ("thousands"), misrepresented a previous March 20 incident involving alleged racial slurs at the U.S. Capitol, and waited until his fourteenth paragraph to…
Tom Blumer
April 15th, 2010 11:38 AM

NY Times Polls Tea Partiers, Finds Them Educated, But Also Angry and I

Thursday's lead New York Times story on a new poll of Tea Party members (a joint effort by the Times and CBS News) got off to a promising start with a headline that probably truly qualified as news for the paper's liberal readership: "Poll Finds Tea Party Backers Wealthier and More Educated."The story by Kate Zernike and Megan Thee-Brenan also began on an upbeat note (Zernike has evidently taken…
Clay Waters
April 15th, 2010 11:10 AM

AP's Tea Party News Theme: 'Fringe Groups, Extremists, or Infiltrators

The tea-party headline at the bottom of the screen early this morning on the local D.C. CBS affiliate WUSA said this: "Tea Party Leaders Anxious About Extremists." The same headline graced an Associated Press story this morning. The theme of the day isn't the burdensome growth of government. It's media bias, piled upon media bias, as AP's David Lieb began:  Organizers of tax-day tea parties are…
Tim Graham
April 15th, 2010 11:03 AM

The Bite Stings, But the Itching Lasts and Lasts

Happy Tax Day!  :)
Glenn Foden
April 15th, 2010 9:37 AM

How AP Feels About Today's Tea Party Gatherings

This is sooooo predictable. An unbylined Associated Press item on today's Tea Party Express tour wrap-up in Washington uses a word that the wire service almost never (if not absolutely never) applies to truly violent leftist groups. The Google page carrying the AP report also has an interesting lead "Related article." Here's the brief AP item (produced in full for fair use and discussion…
Tom Blumer
April 15th, 2010 9:34 AM

Tax Day Open Thread

Happy Tax Day, NBers!Who's attending a Tea Party rally today? Did everyone get their forms in on time? How about some tax-themed discussion and debate.
NB Staff
April 15th, 2010 8:56 AM