NBC

For any media critic keeping score on whether NBC is cutting corners to be kind to help their Russian hosts, the sports-journalism blog Deadspin reports that International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach made a statement during the Opening Ceremonies that included a not-so-veiled punch at the Russians and their speech-squashing “gay propaganda” law, telling the athletes it’s possible to…

What was the best way for NBC to begin that network's coverage of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia? Have sports anchor Bob Costas host a brief profile on Vladmir Putin in which the Russian president is hailed as a global statesman superior to U.S. president Barack Obama. ' During a video portion of the profile, Costas said that Putin is an accomplished peacemaker, crediting him with…

NBC whitewashed Russia's communist legacy in the lead segment of its Friday broadcast of the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Sochi. Game of Thrones actor Peter Dinklage narrated the network's lionization of the largest country by land mass: "Russia overwhelms. Russia mystifies. Russia transcends. Through every stage of its story, it's resisted any notion of limitation. Through…

Thursday's CNN Newsroom spotlighted how President Obama "called for promoting religious freedom – quote, 'a key part of U.S. foreign policy," at the annual National Prayer Breakfast, but glossed over his administration's controversial birth control/abortifacient mandate under ObamaCare, which is being challenged in an ongoing Supreme Court case. The cable network still stood out, however, as…

A cyber security expert featured on the February 4 NBC Nightly News is alleging that producers edited the story in such a way as to sensationalize the threat that tourists at the Olympic Games in Sochi face from hackers. Hadas Gold of Politico has the story in a piece at the paper's On Media blog:

Sports fans checking in on coverage of Team USA at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia might want to brace themselves for unexpected outbursts of liberal preaching from reporters covering the games. Over the years the MRC has documented lefty reporters and writers using the games to celebrate socialist policies, bash expressions of patriotism and even work in jabs against Republicans. In…

On Wednesday the House Ways and Means Committee released new emails proving that former IRS executive Lois Lerner secretly helped craft, with Treasury officials, new rules that would make it easier to crack down on conservative groups like the Tea Party. These new rules were being written in 2012, at the height of the IRS’s targeting of the Tea Party. So far the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC)…

Contemporary abortion advocates have moved beyond the Clinton-era “safe, legal and rare” mantra in favor of “safe, legal and accessible” – and the networks oftentimes appear to do the same. When the Guttmacher Institute published a study revealing how the U.S. abortion rate had reached its lowest level since the Roe V. Wade decision in 1973, only one network covered the news: CBS. During the…

Sports fans checking in on coverage of Team USA at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia might want to brace themselves for unexpected outbursts of liberal preaching from reporters covering the games. Over the years the MRC has documented lefty reporters and writers using the games to celebrate socialist policies, bash expressions of patriotism and even work in jabs against Republicans,…

With rapidly rising debt and an unprecedented credit downgrade, Puerto Rico is facing a looming default with terrifying implications on American bond markets, though you would never know about it watching broadcast news. The leading credit rating firm Standard & Poor’s Rating services downgraded Puerto Rican debt to “junk” status on Feb. 5, with further downgrades likely. Despite Puerto…

Journalists love to preen as human rights watchdogs, congratulating themselves publicly for their roles – real or imagined – in securing the life and liberty of the downtrodden. That is, as long as it’s the right sort of downtrodden.  Take, for example, NBC’s coverage in the run up to the Sochi Winter Olympics. Because of Russian restrictions on gays’ free speechfor homosexuals, the official…

While both CBS This Morning and ABC's Good Morning America both managed some air time on Wednesday to cover a new Congressional Budget Office report showing ObamaCare will cost the American economy about 2.5 million jobs, NBC's Today couldn't be bothered to mention the troubling news. The NBC morning show did have time to provide a three-minute report on the latest bad behavior by pop star…

On Tuesday evening, the networks played to the White House spin that ObamaCare won't cut jobs since those expected to move from full-time to part-time work would do so voluntarily. "We got a report today about ObamaCare that was both surprising and widely misunderstood," CBS anchor Scott Pelley introduced the CBO report that estimates ObamaCare will trim about 2 million full-time jobs by…

On Sunday's NBC Meet the Press, moderator David Gregory fretted over the "shrinking presidency" of Barack Obama: "A thousand days left for President Obama. And here was a headline we looked up back in 2009 at the inauguration. [From Washington Post] 'Historians say he,' meaning Obama, 'could redefine the presidency.' And with no disrespect to this policy, here's Denis McDonough, the chief of…