White House PR? CBS Highlights Young ObamaCare Enrollee's 'Peace of Mi

As the networks reported on President Obama's Tuesday "victory lap" over ObamaCare's new enrollment numbers, CBS played right into the administration's hands by highlighting the "peace of mind" of a young adult who signed up for health care. In what could have passed for a White House commercial, CBS's Ben Tracy interviewed an uninsured 33 year-old who "felt like a ticking time bomb" before…

CBS Touts Dem Effort to Make Koch Brothers 'Public Enemy Number One

Teasing an upcoming story Tuesday on a left-wing smear campaign against conservative donors Charles and David Koch, CBS This Morning co-host Norah O'Donnell proclaimed: "Battling the Koch brothers, Democrats are fighting back against the family that spent more than $150 million trying to shake up Congress." Introducing the segment, fellow co-host Charlie Rose announced that "one of the best-…

NBC Hypes 'Late Surge' to Make ObamaCare Deadline, Allows a Mere 22 Se

All three morning shows on Tuesday hyped an "eye-popping" surge on the final day of ObamaCare sign-ups, but NBC's Today minimized the latest problems for those attempting to meet the deadline. Despite two segments on the topics, the four-hour program covered this angle for a scant 22 seconds.  In contrast, Jon Karl on ABC's Good Morning America threw cold water on the celebration. Ignoring co…

Six Seconds of Awkward: CBS's Rose Gets Dead Air from Bill Daley About

Wrapping up an interview with President Obama's former White House chief of staff Bill Daley on Tuesday's CBS This Morning, co-host Charlie Rose wondered if it was "fair to say" that ObamaCare was "badly conceived." After a long pause, Daley replied: "I didn't hear you, Charlie." Rose let him off the hook, and was suddenly out of time: "I was asking whether it was badly conceived but I don't…

Networks Fret Over UN Report on Climate Change; 'Urgent New Warning

The networks all hyped the new United Nations report on climate change on Monday evening, touting it as a dire call for action and an "urgent new warning." NBC's Brian Williams gave by far the most dramatic take on the report, even starting the Nightly News with the story. "Good evening, the world has never been spoken to quite this way," he soberly began. [See video below.]

Networks Just Give Mic to Obama and Biden on Evening of ObamaCare Enro

Hours before ObamaCare's enrollment deadline, the networks provided an overall positive take on the law and allowed the White House to defend its signature legislation, leaving no room for a Republican response.   CBS highlighted the last-minute rush to sign up on the exchanges but when it reported that the final enrollment numbers would fall short of the White House's original prediction,…

ABC and CBS Drop the Ball: Take an Hour to Notice ObamaCare Website Cr

While Monday's NBC Today began its 7 a.m. ET hour coverage of the ObamaCare enrollment deadline by noting the healthcare.gov website had crashed yet again, it took an hour for ABC's Good Morning America and CBS This Morning to notice the malfunction and mention it in their reporting. [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump] Good Morning America's initial coverage was…

WashPost’s David Ignatius Cheers On Obama ‘Trying To Understand

Appearing on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, The Washington Post’s David Ignatius did his best to shill for President Obama following the president’s interview with CBS anchorman Scott Pelley. Speaking with moderator Bob Schieffer on Sunday, Ignatius opined, “It's crucial for statesmen to try to see the world as their adversaries see it” while urging President Obama to see the world…

CBS's Pelley Glowingly Wonders How the Pope 'Inspired' Obama; Omits Re

Friday's CBS Evening News featured a previously unaired portion of Scott Pelley's softball interview of President Obama on his recent meeting with Pope Francis. The Vatican noted on Thursday that "there was a discussion on questions of particular relevance for the Church...such as the exercise of the rights to religious freedom, life and conscientious objection" – a reference to the Catholic…

Networks Ignore Ultra-Low Support For ObamaCare; CBS Hypes 'Surging' W

Friday's CBS Evening News picked up where the Big Three morning shows left off earlier in the day and trumpeted how "visitors have been surging to [HealthCare.gov] – about one-and-half million a day." Scott Pelley did give a bit of slightly bad news during his 16-second news brief, noting that "today, the ObamaCare website was taken down for about 20 minutes, to fix a problem that affected log-…

CBO Estimates Minimum Wage Hike Would Cost Private Sector $15 Billion

The network evening news casts have yet to report an estimate by the Congressional Budget Office that President Obama's proposal to hike the minimum wage would cost the private sector $15 billion and raise the deficit. The CBO report came out on Wednesday, but as of Friday evening the networks have ignored it. As the Washington Free Beacon pointed out, the CBO says that Obama's minimum wage…

Big Three Blackout: No Mention of Issa Threatening Contempt Charges fo

On Wednesday Fox News reported that House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa threatened to hold the IRS commissioner in contempt of Congress if he didn’t hand over emails from Lois Lerner and other IRS officials. So far none of the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) network evening or morning shows have mentioned the latest development in the ongoing investigation of the…

CBS Frets Over 'Tough' Abortion Law Being Upheld, Skips What Ruling Ac

While the CBS Evening News on Thursday and Good Morning America on Friday allowed mere seconds to explain a court ruling upholding "tough" "new abortion restrictions" in Texas, only Fox News fully detailed what the decision and law actually do. [See video below. MP3 audio here.] Evening News guest anchor Sharyn Alfonsi briefly informed, "A federal appeals court today upheld Texas' new abortion…

Networks Cheer ObamaCare 'Sign-Up Surge' as 'Milestone,' Ignore Lack o

On Thursday evening and Friday morning, ABC, NBC, and CBS all touted a "surge" in sign-ups for ObamaCare ahead of Monday's March 31 deadline. What none of the networks mentioned was that the percentage of young, healthy enrollees was still short of the minimum necessary to sustain the health care law. On ABC's World News on Thursday, anchor Diane Sawyer hailed the enrollment numbers as an "…