Appearing as a guest on MSNBC Live with Kate Snow, NBC Meet the Press host Chuck Todd tried to explain away a poll showing that most Americans have a negative view of Islam by chalking it up largely to a "lack of familiarity" with the religion, and declared that "unfamiliarity breeds the fear."
Anti-Americanism
By Mark Finkelstein | November 24, 2015 | 8:41 AM EST
In a bid to pump up his anemic African-American support, Bernie Sanders very publicly chowed down yesterday with rapper Killer Mike, who at a subsequent rally endorsed Sanders. Reporting on the meeting of the unlikely duo, the Washington Post wrote that among other things they discussed "their mutual appreciation for the work of the philosopher Noam Chomsky."
So Bernie digs Noam Chomsky. You remember Noam: condemned the killing of Bin Laden and said that George W.'s crimes "vastly exceed bin Laden's;" self-described anarchist-socialist; member of Marxist Industrial Workers of the World; agnostic on the Holocaust, doesn't think Holocaust denial is anti-Semitic; banned from visiting Israel because of anti-Israel positions; defender of the genocidal Khmer Rouge. So what has been the MSM's reaction to Sanders fondness for Chomsky? Crickets, of course. Try to imagine the MSM reaction if a leading GOP presidential candidate expressed appreciation for a similarly-controversial figure on the far right.
By Brad Wilmouth | November 17, 2015 | 1:35 AM EST
Daily Beast Foreign Editor Christopher Dickey made another MSNBC appearance on Monday afternoon, this time on MSNBC Live with Thomas Roberts, where he again went after the "right wing" over negative reaction to taking in Muslim refugees in the aftermath of the Paris terrorist attacks. He also declared that it was "shameful" that some U.S. politicians are pressuring against Syrian refugees being allowed into the country, and predicted that the U.S. would "earn" the "hatred" of the world in not accepting them.
He also asserted that, in Europe, "racism and hostility" against Muslims has been "ginned up by the right wing and by fears of people," and dismissed reports by fellow guest Jake Wallis Simons of the Daily Mail that fake Syrian passports are easy to purchase and utilize to blend in with refugees entering Europe.
By Brad Wilmouth | November 15, 2015 | 3:59 PM EST
On Sunday's Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN, host Zakaria suggested that it would be a "mistake" for the West to make a "swift and violent response" to the Paris terrorist attacks because doing so "further stokes the fires of jihad." He plugged an upcoming segment: "Coming up, it's an all too familiar pattern. A well-planned attack on the West, followed by a swift and violent response that further stokes the fires of jihad. Will the West make these mistakes again? That's next on GPS."
By Matt Philbin | September 23, 2015 | 10:34 AM EDT
An anti-Western propaganda network is reportedly letting go a quarter of its workforce. But this time it’s not MSNBC. On Tuesday, The Guardian reported that falling oil prices are forcing the Qatari emir to cut expenditures. So rather than cut his funding of Hamas, 800-1,000 al-Jazeera employees are on the chopping block worldwide.
By Dylan Gwinn | August 3, 2015 | 10:01 AM EDT
Wait, we’re not all winners?
Imagine: liberal HBO airing a program that says we should stop treating our special little snowflakes like special little snowflakes! That fluffing Jr.’s short-term self-esteem with those soccer participation trophies may be a long-term mistake. HBO really did it – but Real Sports host and veteran lefty scold Bryant Gumbel couldn’t let the opportunity pass to turn an otherwise constructive segment into a shot at America.
By Ken Shepherd | April 21, 2015 | 9:18 PM EDT
Salon editor-at-large Joan Walsh is not worried in the least about Iran's arming/equipping of anti-Israel, anti-American Houthi rebels in Yemen, nor in the Islamic Republic obtaining Russian-made surface-to-air missiles which could take down American or Israeli jets seeking to bomb nuclear facilities.
"This is a nuclear deal, it's not an everything deal," Walsh huffed in reaction to mild concerns voiced by Hardball host Chris Matthews and former Rep. Harold Ford (D-Tenn.), concerns not so much about the folly of the nuclear deal itself but in how Iran's actions are making it harder for President Obama to find support in Congress.
By Mark Finkelstein | April 16, 2015 | 10:09 AM EDT
Mary Anne Weaver appeared on today's Morning Joe to discuss her New York Times Magazine cover article "Her Majesty's Jihadists." On the one hand, Weaver paints a striking portrait of the radicalization of young Muslims in the UK, reporting for example that there are more British jihadists than there are Muslims serving in the British military. But when asked what could be done about the problem, did Weaver criticize the radical clerics preaching a poisonous strain of Islam? Nope. She pointed her finger at the West 1. criticizing insufficient "integration" of Muslims into British society; 2. criticizing a new security law in the UK clamping down on people joining jihadist groups; and 3. saying that Muslims feel they are "under attack" from "indiscriminate bombing led by the US," in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
Lefty Writer Relays Foreign Gripes About America’s ‘Trigger-Happiness’ and ‘Cutthroat Free-Marketeering’
By Tom Johnson | January 18, 2015 | 1:42 PM EST Ann Jones has doubts about allegations that America is “crazy,” but adds, “Some people who question me say that the U.S. is ‘paranoid,’ ‘backward,’ ‘behind the times,’ ‘vain,’ ‘greedy,’ ‘self-absorbed,’ or simply ‘dumb.’ Others, more charitably, imply that Americans are merely ‘ill-informed,’ ‘misguided,’ ‘misled,’ or ‘asleep,’ and could still recover sanity. But wherever I travel, the questions follow.”
By Mark Finkelstein | December 10, 2014 | 8:23 AM EST
Who were those guys on Morning Joe today—two Feinstein staffers? Nope, they were Mark Halperin and Jeremy Peters, making like Dem aides in defending the report on the CIA that Dem Senator Diane Feinstein released yesterday.
Halperin, head of Bloomberg Politics, had the chutzpah to claim that the report was not "political." Peters of the New York Times then chimed in to say that in releasing the report, the Senate conducted itself in a "very sober" way.
By Tom Johnson | November 24, 2014 | 10:11 PM EST
One blogger argued that media outlets which took the story seriously should “spend the next three-plus years publishing articles [or] airing pieces” telling the public that it was “a cynical and spiteful lie from the beginning.”
By Matthew Balan | November 12, 2014 | 9:30 PM EST
ABC, CBS, and NBC's evening newscasts on Wednesday glossed over the radical left-wing ideology of the Turkish protesters who assaulted three U.S. sailors in Istanbul earlier in the day. ABC's Martha Raddatz reported that the "the attackers [are] members of an ultra-nationalist group called the Turkish Youth Union, angry at what it calls 'American imperialism.'" NBC's Brian Williams underlined that "these were apparently the actions of a fringe group."