Barack Obama

With the Democrats facing bad news in the coming midterms, the networks have largely been ignoring the possible electoral wave. Yet, NBC and CBS couldn't resist the "cute" story of Barack Obama bantering with a woman and her boyfriend on Monday. As the President was getting ready to do early voting in Chicago, a man walked by and told him, "Don't touch my girlfriend." 

In relaying the results of their polling partnership's latest survey, Associated Press polling director Jennifer Agiesta and reporter Emily Swanson held their most important finding until their report's seventh paragraph. Despite their effort to downplay it, Matt Drudge, whose nose for genuine news is legendary, spotted it. Accordingly, his current headline screams: "POLL SHOCK: WOMEN WANT…

On Tuesday, ABC and NBC made no mention of the upcoming midterm elections, which were two weeks away from Tuesday and include numerous Senate races that will decide whether Republicans or Democrats control the U.S. Senate. ABC’s Good Morning America, ABC World News Tonight with David Muir, NBC’s Today, and NBC Nightly News made no mention of the midterm elections in their evening newscasts while…

"MSNBC had record-low ratings last quarter.  But the network remains dedicated to objective journalism, according to its program director, Barack Obama."  -- Jodi Miller

Elizabeth Williamson's coverage at the Wall Street Journal of the latest WSJ/NBC News poll has a very strange omission. It contains a graph showing "right track/wrong track" polling percentages heading each midterm election going back to 1990. But Williamson, while addressing why the American people feel as they do right now in larger historical context, never commented on the graph's specific…

Josh Lederman's report this morning at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, treats President Barack Obama's return to Chicago as a trip down memory lane: "Obama got glimpses of a simpler time when his life was for the most part, normal: the unpaid bills on his desk, the volunteers who pitched in on his first Senate campaign, the day he marched in seven Fourth of July parades."…

Obama has been a champion of equal pay for women, at least according to his administration and the network news media. The broadcast networks boosted his image on the subject throughout his presidency, from the first bill he signed into law in 2009 to a September 2014 speech mentioning “equal pay.” ABC said Obama waged an “assault” on the pay gap with an executive order over salary disclosures,…

The New Yorker magazine was a fierce opponent of President Bush (starting with Jane Mayer’s attacks on Bush anti-terrorist policies) and is now a enthusiastic supporter of President Obama. The latest proof comes in an article on Obama’s judicial legacy by New Yorker writer (and CNN legal analyst) Jeffrey Toobin. Like many a liberal journalist, Toobin wants to help the president pretend that…

The story filed by Politico's Jennifer Epstein after President Barack Obama's campaign appearance in Upper Marlboro, Maryland yesterday seemed evenhanded enough. Unlike Josh Lederman at the Associated Press, who, as I noted yesterday, failed to report that it happened at all, Epstein even got around to describing how many of those in attendance left the event early: "... once the president…

Tart-tongued Tina Brown is at it again. On today's Morning Joe, seeking to explain why Republicans are doing surprisingly well with women voters this year, Brown said: "they had their rabies shots."

Don't know what Dorian Warren's been smoking, but we can guess what he's been reading: Rolling Stone, and in particular a recent column in which Paul Krugman claims that Barack Obama is one of the most "successful presidents in American history" . On today's Morning Joe, MSNBC contributor Warren said he'd be happy to call his Vegas buddies to bet that "history will be very, very good to Barack…

One would think, based on comparing dispatches from Reuters and the Associated Press, that President Barack Obama must have spoken at two different events in Upper Marlboro, Maryland today. The two dispatches are so radically different in tone and content that they it doesn't seem possible that they both could be from the same event. But they are. Jeff Mason at Reuters (saved here for future…

On October 8, Andrew Taylor at the Associated Press wrote that "(President Barack) Obama inherited a trillion-dollar-plus deficit after the 2008 financial crisis." In a NewsBusters post later that day, I pegged Obama's true inheritance at roughly $245 billion as of when he was first sworn into office, and at about $600 billion if projected over the full fiscal year. The actual deficit for fiscal…

In an all too typical unskeptical report, Jim Kuhnhenn at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, allowed President Barack Obama to claim, in Kuhnhenn's words, that "health and security experts continue to tell him that the screening measures already in place for travelers are more effective" than "restricting travel to the U.S. from the three Ebola-stricken West African nations."…