Terrorists target America's shopping malls, but the nation is defenseless thanks to partisan Republicans shutting down the Department of Homeland Security. That's the ominous picture the three major networks painted this week. Instead of offering balanced coverage of a fight that tied DHS funding and Republican opposition to Barack Obama's executive order amnesty, ABC, NBC and CBS hyped the threat of an endangered United States. Out of 11 segments, network news viewers never heard a single word of criticism of President Obama's executive amnesty order that precipitated the conflict.
Budget
By Mark Finkelstein | February 23, 2015 | 6:07 PM EST
In a classic example of phony political jujitsu, an MSNBC contributor has tried to turn the patriotism issue back against Republicans. Appearing on today's Ed Show, Steve Clemons attacked the "patriotism" of GOP congressional leaders, accusing them of "undermining the security of the nation."
This because Republicans have attached amendments to the DHS funding bill denying funds for President Obama's executive amnesty. Of course neither Clemons nor Schultz revealed that in a potential DHS "shutdown," all essential personnel, including those at TSA, Customs and Border, Secret Service, FEMA and Coast Guard, would continue to work. Only non-essential personnel, mainly office workers, would be furloughed.
By Kyle Drennen | February 23, 2015 | 12:58 PM EST
On Monday, both NBC's Today and CBS This Morning used a terrorist threat against the Mall of America in Minneapolis to hit the Republican Congress over the Department of Homeland Security funding fight. On Today, White House correspondent Kristen Welker concluded her report on the security concerns by declaring: "Meanwhile, the clock is ticking with Congress locked in a bitter battle over how to fund DHS. If Congress can't resolve its differences by Friday, the agency that oversees much of the nation's security operations will run out of money."
By Tom Blumer | February 11, 2015 | 9:54 PM EST
The federal government today reported a $17.5 billion budget deficit for January. That brings this fiscal year's shortfall through four months to $194.2 billion, up from $182.8 billion during the same period last year.
As usual, the Associated Press's coverage, this time delivered by Martin Crutsinger, named the nation's "Worst Economic Writer" by National Review's Kevin Williamson two years ago, gave an incomplete historical explanation for the $1 trillion-plus annual deficits incurred from fiscal 2009 through 2012, and "somehow" forgot that President Barack Obama, who is demanding higher taxes in the budget he recently submitted, already got a significant tax increase on higher incomes just two years ago. Excerpts follow the job:
By Scott Whitlock | February 3, 2015 | 11:33 AM EST
ABC's Good Morning America on Tuesday ignored the massive new budget proposed by Barack Obama (and the tax increases contained within). NBC's Today, despite four hours of air time, allowed a scant 23 seconds. But in that brief period, news reader Natalie Morales spun, "President Obama unveiling a record $4 trillion budget on Monday aimed at helping the poor and middle class."
By Curtis Houck | February 3, 2015 | 12:00 AM EST
Following the unveiling of President Obama’s 2016 budget proposal, two of the three major broadcast networks made time to mention the story during their Monday evening newscasts, but only in the form of short news briefs.
ABC’s World News Tonight with David Muir dedicated 16 seconds of airtime to the subject and while it brought up how much of the President’s proposal centers around tax increases, anchor David Muir failed to note that the prospects of the budget proposal coming to fruition is slim to none.
'Inequality'-Obsessed NYT Makes News Story Sound Like Liberal Protest: 'The Rich Are Getting Much Richer'
By Clay Waters | February 2, 2015 | 8:03 PM EST Two Jonathan Weisman reports from Monday on Obama's big-spending new budget underlined the New York Times' ongoing liberal obsession with "income inequality," with Weisman's report loaded with language that could have come straight from a liberal protester: "the rich are getting much richer."
By Tom Blumer | January 30, 2015 | 9:30 PM EST
Even Charles Babington at the Associated Press, for once not the completely beholden Administration's Press, seemed to be having a hard time buying what Democrats at a meeting in Philadelphia were selling. Unfortunately, he decided to let Joe Biden's direct contradiction of his party's congressional delegation's sunnyside-up stance on the economy go unreported.
In a video carried at the Weekly Standard, Biden said, "To state the obvious, the past six years have been really, really hard for this country, And they've been really tough for our party. Just ask [former DCCC chair] Steve [Israel]. They've been really tough for our party. And together we made some really, really tough decisions -- decisions that weren't at all popular, hard to explain." Despite how "really, really hard" it has all been, the party is attempting an "in your face" at those who want to claim that it has been that way because of the Obama administration's economic policies. Excerpts from Babington's AP report follow the jump (bolds and numbered tags are mine):
By Tom Blumer | January 23, 2015 | 6:51 PM EST
In a report on the upcoming Greek elections, an unbylined Friday afternoon Associated Press report dusted off words seldom seen in their dispatches, using the term "radical left" twice and the word "radical" separately once for good measure.
The almost never seen terms — virtually invisible in decades of descriptions of longtime radical leftists like Fidel Castro, the late Hugo Chavez or lefty legends like the late Che Guevera — appeared in describing the party and policies of Greece's Syriza party and its leader, Alexis Tsipras. Syriza and Tsipras appear to have winning momentum going into Sunday's balloting. Excerpts follow the jump (bolds are mine throughout this post):
Blogger Charles Pierce: Paul Ryan’s Social Security Plan ‘Use[s] Crippled People to Scare Old People’
By Tom Johnson | January 15, 2015 | 11:01 AM EST Esquire’s Pierce deems Ryan “the single biggest fake in American public life” and declares that he “should have no more credibility on [fiscal] issues than does Sarah Palin, his predecessor in the second spot on the [Republican] ticket. Any Democratic congresscritter who seeks to make a deal with him should be drummed out of Washington. Any reporter or pundit who takes his plans for the economy seriously should be reassigned to the custodial staff.”
By Matthew Balan | January 14, 2015 | 3:50 PM EST
Carol Costello badgered Rep. Sean Duffy on Wednesday's CNN Newsroom over House Republicans' attempt to defund President Obama's executive action granting amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants: "The Department of Homeland Security protects the United States from terrorist attacks. Some Senate Republicans – among them, Lindsey Graham – say the strategy should be revised in light of what happened in Paris. So at this moment in time, why mess with that department?"
By Matthew Balan | January 9, 2015 | 9:03 PM EST
Friday's NBC Nightly News enthusiastically promoted President Obama's proposal to provide "free" community college education, to the tune of $60 billion over ten years. Brian Williams hyped the "ambitious offer that could help so many families." Chris Jansing asserted that the President's plan is a "a goal everyone can agree on," but also underlined that the multi-billion dollar program is going to be a "tough sell to Congress."