Open Thread

NB Staff
October 23rd, 2009 9:41 AM

Eight-Figure Couric Demands 'Humility' From Seven-Figure Wall Streeter

Dispatch from the Department of Pot-Meet-Kettle . . . Katie Couric has demanded "humility" from Wall Streeters making seven-figure incomes.  This from a woman pulling down . . . eight figures [an estimated $15 million/year] from CBS while cementing the Evening News' caboose status.Couric made her hypocritical plea in her "Notebook" segment yesterday, commenting on Pres. Obama's pay czar's plan to…
Mark Finkelstein
October 23rd, 2009 9:37 AM

Gore Vidal: Obama 'Too Intelligent' for America; Vidal Adds He Wanted

If you haven't gotten your daily dose of left-wing crazy, strap yourself in. On CNN Headline News Oct. 22 broadcast of "The Joy Behar Show," left-wing author and conspiracy theorist Gore Vidal shared his thoughts about President Barack Obama. He said he thought the 44th President of the United States might be a little overqualified - at least as far as his intelligence. "I like him," Vidal…
Jeff Poor
October 23rd, 2009 8:08 AM

Fox News: Objective As... Air America

Cenk Uygur of the leftist "Young Turks" radio show wrote up a funny list of "three categories of media" for the Daily Kos, putting Fox News in the category "partisan press" with Mother Jones and National Review magazines, but putting ABC, CNN, the New York Times, and the MSNBC "News Programs" on a list called "Straight News." He also suggested they're about as much a news organization as...Air…
Tim Graham
October 23rd, 2009 7:47 AM

Another Congressman Steps Up for Fox News; Cites MRC’s Business & Me

Over the past couple of weeks, the White House has piled on the Fox News Channel, with a trio of high-ranking administration officials publicly criticizing it, followed by words from President Barack Obama himself about Fox News and topped off with the White House attempting to exclude Fox from the White House press pool. That has some members of Congress questioning why they are doing this..…
Jeff Poor
October 23rd, 2009 1:54 AM

Year-end Deficit Report, Part 2: AP's Crutsinger Misses 'The Year of G

As I pointed out Monday night (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), Associated Press reporter Martin Crutsinger, in his Saturday morning report on the federal government's full-year fiscal results, conveniently "forgot" about a major accounting change that enabled President Obama's Treasury Department to report a final "deficit" of "only" $1.417 trillion. That's hundreds of billion of dollars lower…
Tom Blumer
October 23rd, 2009 12:34 AM

Williams Attributes Drop in Warming Credence to 'People Less Sensitive

NBC's Brian Williams allocated a few seconds Thursday night to how a new Pew Research Center for the People & the Press survey discovered the percent of Americans who, in his words, “believe there's solid evidence of global warming...has dropped off significantly” while “the number of people who say they don't believe in climate change at all has doubled in that time.” (If it's a scientific…
Brent Baker
October 22nd, 2009 9:18 PM

Obama Escalates Feud: Administration Attempts to Exclude Fox News from

Just when you thought the White House couldn't possibly do anything to make their bizarre feud with the Fox News Channel an even larger spectacle - the administration manages to take it to another level. Over the past two weeks, three White House officials have publicly criticized the Fox News Channel by denigrating its status as a news outlet - White House Communications Director Anita Dunn,…
Jeff Poor
October 22nd, 2009 9:09 PM

Chris Matthews: Religious Right In America Resembles The Taliban

Is there no depth MSNBC's Chris Matthews won't sink to?Judging from a truly disgraceful comment he made on Thursday's "Hardball," the answer has got to be a resounding "NO!"Chatting with guests Frank Gaffney and Ron Reagan Jr. about conditions in Afghanistan, Matthews ended a really heated discussion between his guests -- which included the former scolding, "Your father would be ashamed of you,"…
Noel Sheppard
October 22nd, 2009 8:37 PM

Rush: If Fox News Is Talk Radio, MSNBC and CNN Are Pornography

Rush Limbaugh has responded to Barack Obama's claim that Fox News is like talk radio by stating that if the President is right, MSNBC and CNN are pornography.As NewsBusters' Mark Finkelstein reported Thursday, Obama replied to a question about Fox News from NBC's Savannah Guthrie on this morning's "Today" show: "[I]f media is operating basically as a talk-radio format, then that's one thing, and…
Noel Sheppard
October 22nd, 2009 8:03 PM

Olbermann Bashed Bush Administration for Criticizing NBC in

Keith Olbermann's recent cheerleading for the Obama adminstration's attacks on Fox News is in stark contrast to how the "Countdown" host felt about the Bush White House criticizing NBC last year for questionable editing done in a "Today" show report.As NewsBusters' Geoffrey Dickens reported on May 19, 2008, NBC aired a piece that morning which "seemed to blame all of the Middle East's problems on…
Noel Sheppard
October 22nd, 2009 6:16 PM

MSNBC Anchors Lash Out at Cheney; Wonder If He’s of a ‘Rational, H

MSNBC anchors David Shuster and Tamron Hall on Thursday lashed out at a speech Dick Cheney gave that was critical of Barack Obama, speculating on whether the Vice President is of a "rational, healthy mind." Attempting to attack the Bush administration’s handling of Afghanistan for eight years, News Live co-host Tamron Hall dismissed, "Is it selective amnesia?" Shuster and Hall seemed particularly…
Scott Whitlock
October 22nd, 2009 5:44 PM

Media Matters Won't Apologize for Spreading Fake Limbaugh Slavery Quot

Media Matters for America was founded to fight conservative "misinformation." But they don't fight liberal misinformation. They spread it. The Radio Equalizer blog is reporting that now that Rush Limbaugh's NFL-ownership bid is ruined, Media Matters is telling liberal radio hosts that maybe they could stop spreading absurd fake quotes about Limbaugh suggesting slavery had merits or Martin Luther…
Tim Graham
October 22nd, 2009 5:22 PM

Reagan-Bashing NYT Architecture Critic Ouroussoff Predicts a Manhattan

New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff signed on to environmental apocalypse in his Thursday review of Rising Currents: Projects for New York's Waterfront, a research program that he said was "conceived to address the potential effects of rising water levels and apocalyptic storms on the city."But the program's real subject is frustration with the federal government's snail-like…
Clay Waters
October 22nd, 2009 4:57 PM