Essay: Obama’s Reverent Wright-Wing Media
March 24th, 2008 2:30 PM
Editor's Note: This originally appeared in Human Events today -- Monday, March 24th.The Big Three Networks and Their Plan to Protect Obama (PPO)Why did it take until Thursday March 13, 2008, for the nation to begin to learn about Barack Obama's pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright? The man whose Trinity United Church of Christ Obama has attended and generously funded for seventeen years? Whom he…
CBS Castigates McCain Staffer for Accurate Obama/Wright Video
March 21st, 2008 2:56 AM
“The McCain campaign suspends a staffer for circulating an inflammatory video about Barack Obama,” CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric intoned as “Campaign Controversy” was plastered on screen over a YouTube video which simply intersperses clips of Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright. Managing to twist Obama into a victim, a task made easier by the feckless McCain campaign, Couric set up a Thursday…
All 3 Network Newscasts Recognize Anti-War Protests on War Anniversary
March 20th, 2008 6:05 PM
The "Big Three" networks’ evening newscasts, marking the fifth anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq on Wednesday evening, all chose to air news briefs on the anti-war protests across the United States. The news briefs all aired within the first ten minutes of each program. CBS "Evening News" anchor Katie Couric, as part of the first report on her program, used the protests as "evidence" of…
'Extraordinary' Obama Speech a 'Gift' for 'Confronting Race in America
March 18th, 2008 10:29 PM
The ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts on Tuesday framed coverage of Barack Obama's speech, in reaction to the furor over the racist, paranoid and America-hating remarks of his long-time pastor, not by focusing on what it says about Obama's true views and judgment but by admiring his success in “confronting” the issue of “race in America” in an “extraordinary” speech. Indeed, both ABC and CBS…
Ongoing Blackout of Wright's 9/11 Rant, Only ABC Covers Him Monday
March 17th, 2008 9:40 PM
The broadcast network evening show blackout, of Reverend Jeremiah Wright's 2001 charge that the U.S. earned the 9/11 attacks, continued Monday night as neither CBS nor NBC touched the Wright issue and ABC ran a full story which included Wright's “U.S. of K-K-K-A” hate speech and how Obama has been close to Wright for 20 years, but concluded with how “many African-Americans do not understand” the…
CBS Mischaracterizes Supreme Court Ruling on EPA Greenhouse Gas Author
March 14th, 2008 4:41 PM
After Environmental Protection Agency Chief Stephen Johnson's appearance before Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's powerless House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, CBS decided to dole out its own criticism of the EPA. The March 13 "CBS Evening News" reported the EPA had not lived up to the obligations of an April 2007 Supreme Court ruling. "Congressional…
Study: Networks Always Label GOPers With Sex Scandals
March 13th, 2008 4:42 PM
My colleague Brent Baker has painstakingly documented how the big three broadcast networks have gone out of their way to avoid labeling scandal-scarred New York Governor Eliot Spitzer as a “Democrat.” An examination of the fifteen ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening news shows through Wednesday night finds Spitzer was called a Democrat just 20% of the time — twice on CBS, once on ABC, and never…
Network News Ratings Tumble Among Viewers Aged
March 13th, 2008 1:47 PM
According to Media Life Magazine, the three big network evening news broadcasts have slipped badly in the key 18 to 34 age bracket. At the same time, though, the Cable news nets have picked up among that same demographic. All three network newscasts have lost numbers since last year, with Katie Couric having the worst slide of the three.
According to Media Life, the main reason the evening news…
ABC Finally IDs Spitzer as Democrat, NBC Fails to for Third Night
March 13th, 2008 2:10 AM
For the third evening in a row Wednesday, the NBC Nightly News refused to identify Eliot Spitzer as a Democrat, but after ABC's World News failed to cite his party affiliation on Monday and Tuesday night when Elizabeth Vargas anchored, on Wednesday evening substitute anchor George Stephanopoulos finally properly tagged him: “The Democrat resigned today just two days after reports that he…
Essay: Eliot Spitzer – A Man Without A Party
March 12th, 2008 1:04 PM
Democrats dialing for damsels don't get labeled with the big "D" Changing His MindRonald Reagan often said "I did not leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me." For floundering and foundering New York Governor Eliot Spitzer -- a twist on the Gipper's words. Spitzer didn't leave the Democratic Party: the Media just didn't see the need to mention the fact that Spitzer was…
CBS Finds Unique Culprit in Subprime Hardship Story – Race
March 10th, 2008 1:22 PM
Fall behind on your mortgage? These days it's anyone's fault but your own according to the mainstream media. The March 9 "CBS Evening News" found another way to fault home lenders instead of one borrower who took on an ill-planned mortgage that was more than he could pay: the race card. "[Michael] Wiggins, a city bus driver, was one of millions of Americans caught in the subprime mortgage…
CBS's Foreclosure 'Crisis' Hype: 'American Dream Slipping Away
March 6th, 2008 7:48 PM
Delivering a ridiculous level of vacuous hyperbole, Thursday's CBS Evening News greeted reports of a 0.83 percent 4th quarter foreclosure rate with just under 6 percent of mortgages more than a month past due as proof “the American dream” is “slipping away” since “foreclosures are spreading like cancer.” Those may indeed be unusually high levels, but the American dream is hardly “slipping away”…
Couric Scolds Ohio Voter Disturbed by Clinton's 'Emotional Outbursts
March 4th, 2008 8:36 PM
Two quick notes about remarks made by Katie Couric on Tuesday's CBS Evening News in a taped piece in which she spoke with Columbus-area “blue-collar” voters:♦ Talking to the husband and wife owners of a restaurant, Couric learned “an African-American candidate may be more acceptable than a woman.” The husband observed that “Hillary's made emotional outbursts” and worried what would happen “if she…