Republicans in Congress need to hold tobacco company-style hearings, hauling in the presidents of various universities and asking them to justify their multimillion-dollar salaries.
Education
By Curtis Houck | January 27, 2015 | 9:19 PM EST
In a reversal of a key proposal from his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama moved on Tuesday to drop the plan to tax 529 college-savings accounts after outcry from members of both parties and a direct appeal on Air Force One from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
When it came to the networks covering this backtracking by the President on this deeply unpopular idea that even ultra liberals like Pelosi and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) opposed, the “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC made no mention of it during their Tuesday evening newscasts.
By Kyle Drennen | January 22, 2015 | 12:56 PM EST
Introducing a segment on Thursday's NBC Today about parents saving for college, co-host Matt Lauer and the show's financial editor Jean Chatzky spent a scant twenty-four seconds on President Obama's recently announced proposal to hike taxes on college savings accounts. Lauer noted: "Talk to me a little bit about what President Obama was referring to when he gave the State of the Union address and he talked about proposing changes to 529 accounts."
ABC, NBC Cheer Obama’s Liberal Proposals in SOTU Previews; ‘Going to Play a Little Robin Hood’ With Tax Hikes
By Curtis Houck | January 19, 2015 | 9:58 PM EST Ahead of President Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday, the networks offered previews of his speech during their Monday evening newscasts with ABC and NBC working particularly hard to paint a rosy picture for Obama with rising poll numbers and having “redefined” the “model of how to sell the State of the Union.”
Author of Bogus ’1 in 3 Men Would Commit Rape’ Study Still Buys the False '1 in 5' College Assault Stat
By Tom Blumer | January 16, 2015 | 8:09 PM EST On Tuesday, I posted (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog) on a bogus "study" out of North Dakota University contending that "almost one in 3 college men would commit rape 'if nobody would ever know and there wouldn’t be any consequences.'" Media exposure from favorable and unfavorable outlets continues to grow.
In that post, I noted that the study disqualified itself from credibility by uncriticially relaying the thoroughly discredited "1 in 5" statistic, namely (quoting the study's opening) "Federal data estimate that about one in five women becomes the victim of sexual assault while in college," and took that as a clear indication that the trio of academics involved "are not dispassionate researchers, but instead are agenda-driven individuals who are not interested in facts, but are instead looking to reach desired conclusions." In an exchange with the Washington Examiner's Ashe Schow, study leader Sarah Edwards confirmed my assessment, and ratified the idea that any media outlet which takes their work seriously is deliberately spreading disinformation (bolds are mine throughout this post):
By Randy Hall | January 14, 2015 | 5:40 PM EST
During Wednesday's edition of the Cable News Network's New Day morning program, co-host Chris Cuomo took the unusual step of vowing to help Arne Duncan, secretary of education in president Barack Obama's administration, to “go on a shame campaign with Congress to get them to act” on an issue dealing with education.
Cuomo made the remark during an exchange regarding the White House proposal to use the federal government to force taxpayers to cover the costs for two years of “free” community college.
Bogus '1 in 3 Men Would Commit Rape' Study Discredits Itself in Opening Sentence, Goes Downhill From There
By Tom Blumer | January 13, 2015 | 3:17 PM EST The feminist-leftist fever swamp is apparently thrilled to have learned of a North Dakota University "study" purporting to show that almost one in 3 college men would commit rape "if nobody would ever know and there wouldn’t be any consequences."
I'll get to the study's specifics shortly, but first want to note that the work, published in December, automatically discredited itself in its body's opening paragraph:
NYT's Martin Goes Snide Sizing Up GOP 2016: Huckabee a 'Cheerleader of Artery-Clogging Calories' for Opposing First Lady's Reforms
By Clay Waters | January 10, 2015 | 8:07 AM EST New York Times political reporter Jonathan Martin went snide and condescending in his "Political Memo" on Republican presidential prospects for 2016, "In G.O.P., a Divide of Ideology and Age." Treating the Republican Party like a dour religious sect, whose opposition to Michelle Obama's stringent "health" campaign is equivalent to being "a cheerleader of artery-clogging calories," Martin used all the bad buzz words ("stricter...brand of conservatism," "deviations from orthodoxy," "doctrinaire conservatives") to describe the right.
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."
By Scott Whitlock | January 9, 2015 | 12:30 PM EST
All three networks on Friday hyped Barack Obama's call for "free community college," but CBS, NBC and ABC offered very little in the way of skepticism about the cost or feasability of such a proposal.
By Tom Blumer | December 31, 2014 | 11:04 AM EST
If CNN is searching for reasons why its ratings are at an all-time low, it doesn't need to look any further than one entry in its group of "11 extraordinary people of 2014" published on December 5.
Aside from the inanity of publishing such an annual list almost four weeks before year's end — as if no extraordinary people or extraordinary acts ever take place in December — the network's fourth selection was patently offensive, and had no substantive basis for being considered "extraordinary."
By Tom Blumer | December 24, 2014 | 10:42 AM EST
When I first read about this, I thought that it had to be some kind of weird spoof. But it's not.
Over the course of almost two excruciatingly tedious minutes complete with ominous piano-dominated background music, a recently created video intended to become a public service announcement (PSA) shows a teenage boy taking a gun out of a drawer in his parents' bedroom and bringing it to school. At the end of a class period, he puts it on the desk of his shocked teacher and asks her, "Can you take this away? I don’t feel safe with a gun in my house."