NBC

   On Saturday morning, FNC’s Fox and Friends Saturday and ABC’s Good Morning America highlighted Democratic Senator Bob Menendez’s assertion that negotiating with Republicans taxes is like negotiating with terrorists. NBC’s Today show included a brief mention, but CBS’s The Early Show and CNN Saturday Morning ignored the New Jersey Democrat’s over-the-top rhetoric. FNC included a soundbite…

During a Norah O'Donnell report, on Friday's Today, about how well books written by the likes of Sarah Palin, George W. Bush and Glenn Beck are selling, the New York Times' Jenny Schuessler rationalized the only reason conservative books are outpacing liberal ones is because "conservatives have some really strong media personalities" like Beck and Bill O'Reilly " that have a platform that they…

On Friday, the CBS Early Show failed to make any mention of New York Democratic Congressman Charles Rangel being censured by the House of Representatives on Thursday for 11 ethics violations. ABC's Good Morning America and NBC's Today did cover the historic punishment, but adopted a very sympathetic tone toward Rangel. In a slightly extended news brief on Good Morning America, co-host George…

Do a media company's political activities affect the way its subsidiaries report the news? The folks at MSNBC sure think so. That channel's hosts have insisted ad nauseum that Fox News parent company News Corporation's political actives compromise the ability of Fox to report the news fairly and accurately. But MSNBC has, as I have noted before, shilled for policies that would enrich its…

On Wednesday's Today show NBC's Ann Curry managed to thread the theme of global warming through three different news stories, during her 9am news update. The co-anchor began by notifying viewers about the "wild weather" of record rainfall and tornadoes in the South to snow in the Midwest and then told her audience that "unusual weather seems to be a growing trend" as she delivered the latest…

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs appeared on all three major morning shows, on Wednesday, and was pressed by ABC, CBS and NBC's anchors about whether or not the President would fold and compromise with the Republicans on keeping the Bush era tax cuts in place - but it was the Today show's Meredith Vieira that hit him the strongest question from the left as she asked Gibbs what kind of "…

Instead of leading with how Army Private First Class Bradley Manning may have jeopardized national security with his document dump to WikiLeaks, NBC's chief Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski, in his profile of Manning on Tuesday's Today show, told viewers he was the "most unlikely suspect, with a youthful smile" and portrayed him as an abused victim of the military. Miklaszewski used the…

NBC's Matt Lauer, on Tuesday's Today show, invited on soon to be House Majority Leader Eric Cantor to discuss today's meeting of Republican congressional leaders with Barack Obama, and in the process tried to force Cantor to move in the President's direction on raising taxes. The Today co-anchor opened the conversation by wondering if Cantor was going into the meeting in the mood for "…

On Monday's Today show, NBC's Matt Lauer downplayed the criminal factor in the release of hundreds of thousands of classified diplomatic communiques by WikiLeaks, twice labeling the website as only a "messenger" for the documents. Both Lauer and NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell insisted the State Department "crossed a line" by ordering diplomats to spy on foreign diplomats at the United…

A painful period he'd rather forget? Asked to name the person who preceded Meredith Vieira as his Today sidekick, Matt Lauer declined to mention Katie Couric, claiming "there was no one ever.  No one came before Meredith." Matt's convenient case of amnesia came in response to a question from Robin Hall, who is celebrating his 10th and last year as executive producer of Macy's…

NBC correspondent Norah O'Donnell hyped Sarah Palin's criticism of her liberal opponents on Tuesday's Today show, stating that the former governor "rips the heart out of some of her opponents" in her new book. O'Donnell stated that Palin, "in very personal terms, also questions the President's [Obama's] patriotism, concluding he has 'a stark lack of faith in the American people.'" The…

On Monday's Newsroom, CNN's Kyra Phillips gave a false impression of Pope Benedict XVI's recent comments about condoms. While the Pope stated that condom use "can be a first step...on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed," Phillips stated that the pontiff "says condoms are okay sometimes." Refreshingly, Monday's Today show on NBC accurately covered Benedict's…

On Monday, all three network morning show's eagerly highlighted former First Lady Barbara Bush voicing opposition to a Sarah Palin presidential run while suggesting the former Alaska governor has spent too much time in the public eye. As Harry Smith proclaimed at the top of CBS's Early Show: "It's all Palin all the time. But could the most famous family from Alaska be on the verge of…

While the broadcast networks have generally empathized with the distress of airline passengers over the TSA’s new and intrusive airport searches, they have not — thus far, at least — gone so far as to impugn the Obama administration as launching a war against Americans’ civil liberties. Indeed, NBC’s Matt Lauer on Monday even sympathized with TSA Administrator John Pistole: “I hate to even…