Year Ago GDP Jump 'Disappointing'; This Year Negative GDP: 'Whole Lot
July 31st, 2009 8:50 PM
A year ago, when the government reported second quarter Gross Domestic Product (GDP) doubled from the first quarter to 1.9 percent, the CBS Evening News centered a story around what Katie Couric described as “disappointing” news while ABC and NBC didn't utter a syllable about the GDP jump. But Friday night, with a different President in office, Couric crowed a one percent decline in the 2009…
Bad Polls for Obama; CBS Finds Bright Spots, NBC Skates Over Devastati
July 29th, 2009 10:36 PM
CBS and NBC released new polls Wednesday night which illustrated how the public is moving against President Barack Obama on health care as his overall approval, at least in the NBC survey, fell to its lowest-ever level. But while both networks conveyed the bad news for Obama, NBC's Chuck Todd failed to point out how more now disapprove than approve of Obama's handling of health care, a…
Dan Rather Calls for White House to Save Journalism from Financial Har
July 29th, 2009 4:31 PM
As if the relationship between the Obama Administration and the news media weren't cozy enough already, former "CBS Evening News" anchor Dan Rather is calling on President Obama to "make recommendations" for the media on how to survive the economic downturn. Rather spoke at the Aspen Institute in Aspen, Colo. on July 28 and addressed challenges to the news industry, which he described as…
Nets Advance Taxing Big Soda to Pay for ObamaCare
July 28th, 2009 12:23 AM
In highlighting a new study which found $147 billion a year is spent on obesity-related health care and obese people spend $1,400 more a year for health services, ABC and CBS on Monday night couldn't resist interjecting a plug for imposing a tax on soda to bring in revenue to pay for ObamaCare. ABC's Sharyn Alfonsi asserted “health officials seem to like the idea of a federal soda tax” since “…
High & Mighty Couric Scolds NYT's Errors, Forgetting Her Own Colossal
July 25th, 2009 11:06 AM
The TVNewser blog alerted me to Katie Couric’s “Notebook” item yesterday, in which she mocks the New York Times for making “not one, not two, but seven errors” in their remembrance of the late Walter Cronkite last week. TVNewser suggested Couric may have trying to get “payback” for an anti-Couric piece that the Times’s Alessandra Stanley wrote four years ago when Couric worked at NBC:Wow. This is…
Couric Pouts Over Gates Distraction: 'Just as He Was Pushing So Hard f
July 24th, 2009 9:16 PM
ABC, CBS and NBC all led Friday night with President Obama’s decision to appear in the White House press room to backtrack on the fury he inflamed by presuming “stupidity” by the police in the Professor Henry Gates alleged “racial profiling” incident, but only Katie Couric trumpeted Obama’s appearance in the White House briefing room -- which the CBS Evening News ran for an uninterrupted four…
CBS Adds Fuel to the Racism Fire Stoked By Gates Arrest
July 24th, 2009 10:55 AM
Now that President Obama has weighed in on the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, it seems a metaphysical certitude news media will milk this story for all it's worth.On Thursday, the CBS "Evening News" did exactly that by first opening its program with the President's statement made during Wednesday's press conference, and then following it with a segment on how this incident "…
Nets Fail to ID Party of Pols Arrested in NJ; CNN Misleads Its Viewers
July 23rd, 2009 11:13 PM
Continuing a well-established pattern, the broadcast network evening newscasts all failed to point out the party affiliation of the major New Jersey office-holders amongst the 44 people the FBI arrested Thursday for corruption. As the AP pointed out, all but one are Democrats: “Among the 44 people arrested were the mayors of Hoboken, Ridgefield and Secaucus, Jersey City's deputy mayor, and two…
CBS Early Show Uses Obama Volunteer to Promote Health Care Reform
July 22nd, 2009 4:31 PM
While reporting on President Obama’s efforts to pass health care reform legislation on Wednesday’s CBS Early Show, co-host Maggie Rodriguez cited one person who would benefit from the plan: "Debby Smith from Virginia...lost her job back in 2006, and lost her health care benefits, and says that she can't afford the $700 a month that it would cost take to pay for her own insurance."What Rodriguez…
In CBS Interview Obama Claims Unemployment ‘Exceeded Everybody's Exp
July 22nd, 2009 3:36 PM
During an interview with CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric on Tuesday, President Obama defended the administration’s handling of the economy: "nobody...anticipated that in the first three months, we would lose 700,000 jobs per month...the severity and the depth of the recession was something that, you know, really exceeded everybody's expectations."However, on the February 6 Evening News,…
CBS’s Couric Sympathizes With Obama: ‘Is Your Confidence Ever Shak
July 22nd, 2009 1:15 PM
In her Tuesday interview with President Obama, CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric wondered: "You're so confident, Mr. President, and so focused. Is your confidence ever shaken? Do you ever wake up and say, ‘Damn, this is hard. Damn, I'm not going to get the things done I want to get done and it’s just too politicized to really get accomplished the big things I want to accomplish’?" [audio…
Night After Slamming DeMint as 'Incendiary,' Couric Makes Same Point t
July 21st, 2009 8:47 PM
A night after CBS slammed as “incendiary” Senator Jim DeMint's observation that if Republicans are able to block Obama's health care push, “it will be his Waterloo, it will break him,” CBS anchor Katie Couric adopted the same assumption as she expressed worry to the President: “Are you concerned at all that if health care reform fails it will be a huge and devastating setback to your presidency…
