Nets Lend Credibility to 'Bombshell' Iraq Deception Allegations
CBS, NBC, MSNBC and CNN all jumped Tuesday to publicize the claims in a new book by a left-wing journalist, Ron Suskind, that President Bush knew before the war Iraq had no WMD and that to justify the war the administration forged a letter to prove a connection between Saddam Hussein's regime and al-Qaeda. The journalists were unfazed by denials from former CIA Director George Tenet, which they…
GOP House Revolt Over Oil Drilling Gets Ignored or Buried
On Friday, NewsBusters wondered how much attention media would pay to the Republican revolt that occurred after Speaker Pelosi adjourned the House for a five week vacation without allowing a vote on offshore oil drilling.It turns out that if you rely on the evening news programs of the three broadcast networks, you didn't hear about this extraordinary event at all (photo courtesy AP). And, if you…
Day After Skipping Good Economic News, ABC & NBC Highlight Bad
A night after ABC's World News and the NBC Nightly News didn't air a word about the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) doubling to 1.9 percent in the second quarter, up from 0.9 percent in the first, the two evening newscasts found newsworthy a rise in the unemployment rate, with NBC using the increase to segue to a story on how “a growing number of Americans are...being downsized from full-time work…
Only ABC Runs Full Iraq Status Story After Fewest U.S. Deaths Ever
Not surprisingly given the past pattern, of the broadcast networks evening newscasts on Thursday, only ABC's World News devoted a full story to the fewest Americans killed in Iraq in any month since the war began. CBS and NBC gave the great news a few seconds before pivoting to full stories on the rise of female suicide bombers and the sexual assault problem in the military. ABC anchor Charles…
CBS Turns Doubled GDP into 'Disappointing' News, ABC & NBC Silent
Second quarter Gross Domestic Product (GDP) doubled to 1.9 percent, up from 0.9 percent in the first quarter, the Commerce Department announced Thursday morning as consumer spending rose 1.5 percent in the quarter ending June 30, up from 0.9 percent in the first quarter, and U.S. exports soared 9.2 percent, way up from 5.1 percent in the first three months of 2008. Yet the CBS Evening News…
Nets Agitated by McCain's 'Nasty' & 'Childish' Anti-Obama 'Attack' Ad
The McCain campaign's new television ad comparing Barack Obama to shallow celebrities such as Britney Spears and Paris Hilton so upset the network news operations that they all ran full stories, with ABC and NBC leading with the “attack ad.” Though all tried to frame their stories as balanced looks at attacks against each other by both campaigns, it was the McCain ad which prompted the stories,…
Obama's Overseas Adventure Does Little for Evening News Ratings; Long
So the Big 3 networks sent their evening news anchors on the road to follow Barack Obama around last week on his Excellent Overseas Adventure. If the nets' managements harbored any hopes that doing so might significantly increase their overall audience, or meaningfully increase the number of viewers in the key 25-54 demographic, those hopes were dashed when last week's ratings were released…
Nets Don't Hesitate to Properly Identify Stevens as Republican
The ABC, CBS and NBC evening shows on Tuesday night properly identified indicted Senator Ted Stevens as a Republican -- though not very creatively as they all employed the identical language in describing Stevens as “the longest-serving Republican in the U.S. Senate” -- but they weren't so eager to name the party of Democrats in trouble in recent years. ABC anchor Charles Gibson teased World News…
Ahmadinejad's New Ambassador: Brian Williams
NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams acted as a conduit for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's propaganda message of conciliation as NBC Nightly News led Monday with about seven minutes of comments from the Iranian leader's interview with Williams in Tehran, such as how “for more than 50 years now the policy of American statesmen has been to confront the Iranian people.” Williams seemed…
'Nightly News' Anchor: Pro-Obama Bias is 'In the Eye of the Beholder
Is there a pro-Obama bias in the media? Only if you at it from a certain point-of-view according to "NBC Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams. Despite allegations of just the opposite, the wall-to-wall coverage of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama's trip to the Middle East then to Europe wasn't a sign of bias - it was just the media attempting to "educate" according to…
Essay: It’s the Media, Stupid
The networks suggest Obama is driving the narrative, but it's the liberal press themselves doing the driving for Obama (Editor's Note: This essay originally appeared today in Human Events.) Just Another Clown Delivering the News The Big Three networks just foisted a week long Obamathon upon the American people, a political, "journalistic" perversion of Jerry Lewis's annual televised good…
Couric: ‘Glimmer of Hope’ in Israel’s Agreement to Release Terro
When the Israeli government and the terrorist group Hezbollah carried out a prisoner release agreement in which Israel released five Lebanese prisoners while Hezbollah released the bodies of two Israeli soldiers who had been killed, there was a substantial contrast in the way the broadcast network evening newscasts reported the story. While ABC’s Charles Gibson and Simon McGregor-Wood reported on…
A Week with No US Troop Deaths In Iraq
On July 16, Andrew Malcolm at the Los Angeles Times's Top of the Ticket Blog wrote the following (bold is mine): When President Bush ordered the surge in January 2007, (Barack) Obama said: "I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse," a position he maintained throughout 2007. This year he…
NBC's Brian Williams to Interview Iran's Ahmadinejad
In the lead up to the March 2003 Iraq invasion, CBS's Dan Rather interviewed Saddam Hussein.Now, less than four months before America goes to the polls to elect a new president, NBC's Brian Williams is going to interview Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.I wonder if Williams will ask the lunatic despot who he's supporting in the coming elections?Regardless of the answer, TVNewser reported…
