Nets Dance Around “Partial-Birth” Term, Schieffer Frets About “E
February 22nd, 2006 12:48 AM
All three broadcast network evening newscast anchors separated themselves from the “partial-birth” abortion term, some more awkwardly than others, as all ran full stories Tuesday on the decision by the Supreme Court to take up, in the fall, the constitutionality of a federal ban on the abortion procedure -- of whatever name -- which lacks a “health of the mother” exception. After CBS reporter…
Journalists Jealous Cheney Went to FNC, Take Shots at Integrity of FNC
February 16th, 2006 12:29 AM
Admitting he hadn’t seen the interview, at about 4:15pm EST Wednesday on CNN’s The Situation Room, Jack Cafferty charged that “it didn't exactly represent a profile in courage for the Vice President to wander over there to the F-word network for a sit-down with Brit Hume. I mean, that's a little like Bonnie interviewing Clyde, ain't it?” Cafferty soon called FNC a “safe haven” for Dick Cheney and…
Nets Devote as Much Time to Whining About Being Snubbed as to Victim
February 14th, 2006 9:55 PM
The three broadcast network evening newscasts all led Tuesday night with the minor heart attack suffered by the victim of Vice President Cheney’s hunting accident, but all gave equal time to, for the second night in a row, obsessing over the snubbing of the White House press corps -- this time how Scott McClellan didn’t inform them of Harry Whittington’s complication. ABC co-anchor Charles…
Networks Obsess Over Delay in Disclosure of Cheney’s Hunting Acciden
February 14th, 2006 12:09 AM
On Monday night, both the NBC Nightly News and the CBS Evening News, led with Vice President Cheney’s accidental shooting of a hunting companion, treating it as the most important news of the day as they focused on journalistic upset with how the late Saturday afternoon shooting wasn’t disclosed until noontime Sunday -- and then to a local reporter instead of to a member of the White House press…
CBS Touts “Saint Jack” Danforth's Conservative-Bashing, Rues “Co
February 12th, 2006 12:40 AM
Saturday's CBS Evening News devoted its “Weekend Journal” segment to, as anchor Russ Mitchell explained, “the Senate veteran who is known far and wide as 'Saint Jack.'" Bill Whitaker proceeded to relay, without any competing voices, the anti-Christian Right enmity of former moderate, at best, Missouri Republican Senator Jack Danforth who is on a crusade to rid the Republican Party of the…
Evening Newscasts Fret Over Timing of Bush’s Details About LA Terror
February 10th, 2006 12:01 AM
Reporting on President Bush’s Thursday speech in which he detailed a foiled al-Qaeda attack on a Los Angeles office tower, the three broadcast network evening newscasts fretted about the timing in relation to controversy over “domestic eavesdropping.” ABC co-anchor Charles Gibson cued up George Stephanopoulos, “Democrats in Washington immediately began asking: Why is the President talking about…
Networks Cite Imaginary “Cuts” as Federal Budget Continues to Soar
February 7th, 2006 12:03 AM
Federal spending has soared 33 percent since 2001 and will continue to surge under President Bush’s budget proposal released Monday afternoon, yet network reporters referred to imaginary “cuts” in programs and departments. On World News Tonight, ABC’s Martha Raddatz outlined Bush’s proposal to increase defense and homeland security spending before she asked: “How to pay for all this? There are…
CBS Skips How Public Sees Media as “Harder” on Bush, Democrats
February 4th, 2006 7:35 PM
Introducing a Friday CBS Evening News story on the state of the media, part of a week-long “The State of...” series prompted by the annual State of the Union address, anchor Bob Schieffer pointed to how a CBS News/New York Times poll found that “most Americans have at least some confidence in the media, and more than two out of three [69 percent] believe the stories the media report are accurate…
ABC and CBS Ignore Plunge in Unemployment Rate to Lowest Since Before
February 4th, 2006 12:36 AM
The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced Friday that the unemployment rate for January fell by 0.2 percent from December, down to 4.7 percent, the lowest level since July of 2001. But viewers of ABC’s World News Tonight and CBS Evening News on Friday night heard nothing about it, though ABC had time for another full story on the “cartoon outrage” by Muslims and a full piece on an Institute for…
CBS’s Reminder: “Don't Forget that Other Washington Scandal, CIA L
January 31st, 2006 12:01 AM
CBS decided that the night before President Bush’s State of the Union address would be a good time to launch its “State of the...” series with a look at the "State of the Scandals," a judgment which allowed the CBS Evening News to revive the Plame case. Gloria Borger insisted that “on the eve of the President's State of the Union speech, official Washington is distracted, not by policy debates…
Schieffer Asks Bush If U.S. “Losing Moral High Ground?”& Touts
January 27th, 2006 7:56 PM
Bob Schieffer mostly posed unobjectionable questions on the news of the day (Hamas, Iran, etc.) to President George W. Bush in an interview conducted Friday and then excerpted on the CBS Evening News. But he did pose three inquiries from the agenda of the left which caught my attention. Schieffer wanted to know, in reference to NSA eavesdropping, if Bush thinks “there is anything that a…
