Obama's Nobel Prize

NBC's Bob Costas Describes Putin as Better Statesman Than Obama
By Randy Hall | February 8, 2014 | 10:57 PM EST

What was the best way for NBC to begin that network's coverage of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia? Have sports anchor Bob Costas host a brief profile on Vladmir Putin in which the Russian president is hailed as a global statesman superior to U.S. president Barack Obama. '

During a video portion of the profile, Costas said that Putin is an accomplished peacemaker, crediting him with preventing an American airstrike on Syria and coaxing the Iranian government to the nuclear negotiating table.

MSNBC Finally Reports Obama's Drone Hypocrisy, Three Weeks After the Election
By Ryan Robertson | November 26, 2012 | 5:33 PM EST

Filling in for Alex Wagner on Monday afternoon, Ari Melber of the left-wing Nation magazine did some thing on MSNBC's Now that Wagner and many of their colleagues have been reluctant to do themselves -- expose the deception and dishonesty of Obama on the subject of drone attacks. While there was a brief mention or two in the weeks and months that preceded the election, the coverage was never sufficient -- considering the circumstances.

It's a telling sign however, that such a report would air three weeks after the incumbent's decisive re-election victory, by a guest host at that. Armed with indisputable video evidence, Melber noted the disparity between the candidate and the president :

Flashback: CNN's Lothian Also Tossed Obama a Softball at Presser Last Year
By Matt Hadro | November 15, 2011 | 3:17 PM EST

CNN's White House correspondent Dan Lothian made headlines with his ridiculous softball question to President Obama on Sunday. However, as NewsBusters has documented, Lothian has posed such a soft question to Obama before, and has shown some liberal bias in his past reporting.

Lothian asked the President at Sunday's press conference in Hawaii if he thought the Republican candidates, who supported the practice of waterboarding, were "uninformed, out of touch, or irresponsible." Fox News analyst Bernie Goldberg later called it "the most ridiculous question I have ever heard by a regular reporter from a so-called mainstream news outfit. Ever."

ABC, NBC Starstruck by 'Patented Michelle (Obama) Power'
By Alex Fitzsimmons | June 22, 2011 | 12:43 PM EDT

ABC and NBC have delivered fawning coverage of First Lady Michelle Obama's visit this week to South Africa and Botswana, oozing over the "celebrity" and "excitement" of the "patented Michelle power" on display. To its credit, CBS has largely taken a pass on the idolatry.

Video follows break

Obama More 'Hawkish' Than Bush, More Charming, Say 'Morning Joe' Pundits
By Matt Hadro | March 24, 2011 | 12:30 PM EDT

Is Obama more 'hawkish' and yet more charming than his immediate predecessor?

Apparently so, claimed Time's Mark Halperin and MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski on Thursday's edition of "Morning Joe."

Halperin believes that President Obama has been more cavalier than his predecessor, and Brzezinski thinks that although Obama has extended many of Bush's unpopular policies, he brings a different "characterization" to the table.

The panel harped on the irony of Obama receiving the Nobel Peace Prize despite his inexperience in the White House at the time (less than a year) and the fact that he has continued American wars overseas and started a third one in Libya. Liberals Mike Barnicle and Mika Brzezinski both admitted to having been taken aback by the 2009 decision to bestow the prize on the president in his freshman year in office. (Interestingly enough, this recalls an episode in 2009 when co-host Joe Scarborough mocked the Nobel committee's decision on the "Morning Joe" set.)

(Video after the jump. Comments from start until 3 minutes in.)

Pentagon Rescinds Franklin Graham’s Invitation, Al Sharpton is Welcome at White House
By Colleen Raezler | April 23, 2010 | 10:21 AM EDT
The Pentagon rescinded the invitation of evangelist Franklin Graham to speak at its May 6 National Day of Prayer event because of complaints about his previous comments about Islam.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation expressed its concern over Graham's involvement with the event in an April 19 letter sent to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. MRFF's complaint about Graham, the son of Rev. Billy Graham, focused on remarks he made after 9/11 in which he called Islam "wicked" and "evil" and his lack of apology for those words.

Col. Tom Collins, an Army spokesman, told ABC News on April 22, "This Army honors all faiths and tries to inculcate our soldiers and work force with an appreciation of all faiths and his past comments just were not appropriate for this venue."

Obama's Words and Deeds Reveal His Naive Foreign Policy
By Charlie Daniels | December 11, 2009 | 1:01 PM EST
There is one thing I very much want everyone who reads this to understand. Although I vehemently disagree with just about everything Barack Obama has done since he has been in office, and I really believe that he's digging a fiscal hole that this nation will be generations, if ever, digging out of, although I believe him to be a total socialist and just hate it when I have seen him bow to royalty around the world, I will write this piece with as much impartiality as I can, so that it will not be about the man or anything he has done in the past, but rather about the defense of this nation.

First of all, trying terrorists in America is nothing more than gross arrogance by our President and Attorney General.

The repercussions of a terrorist trial in New York could be so catastrophic that you don't even want to think about it.

Will Smith: 'Barack Obama as an Idea Marks an Evolutionary Flash Point for Humanity'
By Brent Baker | December 10, 2009 | 6:19 PM EST
“Barack Obama as a person is a fantastic individual, but Barack Obama as an idea marks an evolutionary flash point for humanity,” gushed actor Will Smith (IMDb page), who will co-host Friday's Nobel Peace Prize Concert in Oslo. His idealization of Obama came during a recorded interview, from Norway, with CNN's Dan Lothian run shortly before 5 PM EST on Thursday's The Situation Room.

Asked if Obama had really earned the peace prize, Smith's wife, actress Jada Pickett Smith who will co-host the concert with her husband, insisted: “All I can say is that our President has opened his arms to the world and he has been a huge symbol of change himself. So, I have to say that I was quite honored when he was bestowed the Nobel Peace Prize.” Will Smith chimed in with how “they've been giving out that award for a hundred and some years, so they get kind of good at picking” the honoree.

Audio: MP3 clip (30 seconds)
Newsweek's Connolly: Obama's Nobel About 'America the Ideal'
By Ken Shepherd | December 10, 2009 | 3:39 PM EST

<p>Newsweek writer and native Australian <a href="http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thegaggle/pages/katie-connolly.aspx" target="_blank">Katie Connolly</a> set out to lecture American readers today on the magazine's Gaggle blog yesterday about how Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize isn't really about the man or the United States as a country, but rather the U.S. as a lofty ideal -- an ideal she reckons in the eyes of &quot;the collective world&quot; to have been &quot;almost entirely undone&quot; by the Bush administration.</p><p>As such, Connolly <a href="http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thegaggle/archive/2009/12/09/the-nobel-pr... target="_blank">tells us in her December 9 post</a> that Obama had to show kindly Norweigans that his countrymen aren't such a rude, rabble-rousing lot after all, an impression she insists was given by how many Americans exercised that all-too-American ideal of free speech when they criticized the awarding of the Nobel to the freshman president (emphases mine):</p><blockquote>

Brokaw's Really Important Interview: Gorbachev Supports Obama's Nobel Prize
By Mike Sargent | November 9, 2009 | 5:04 PM EST
Sometimes – no, scratch that, many times –  it is difficult to imagine a caricature of the media.

Tom Brokaw made an appearance on this morning's edition of Morning Joe this morning, plugging his interview with the former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev.  Brokaw was, of course, reporting from the historic Brandenburg Gate this morning to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The Brew Crew were gathered in their studio with national security expert Dr. Richard Haas, discussing such weighty subjects as the American response to the fall of communism, the geopolitical advantages and disadvantages of that event, and so on.  And which of these subjects did Brokaw use to segue into the subject of his interview?

None.  Instead, Brokaw, the constantly prostrate Gorbachev apologist, chose to highlight Mikhail Gorbachev's approval of President Barack Obama - and his receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize:
Brokaw Gives Free Advice to Obama on How He Can 'Share' the Peace Prize
By Ken Shepherd | October 15, 2009 | 3:43 PM EDT

<p>Concerned about how President Obama's &quot;critics will dog him all the way to Oslo,&quot; former NBC &quot;Nightly News&quot; anchor Tom Brokaw took to the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/14/AR200910... target="_blank">op-ed page of the October 15 Washington Post</a> to offer his recipe for &quot;lift[ing] this discussion out of the partisan soup that is now the main course on our national agenda, whatever the issue.&quot;</p><p>Chef Brokaw then served up what is a proverbial bipartisan casserole comprised of some apolitical figures as well as a smattering of Democratic and Republican statesmen from the past quarter century:</p><blockquote>

'View' Guest Co-Host: Obama's Abortion Position Should Disqualify Him From Nobel
By Mike Sargent | October 12, 2009 | 4:19 PM EDT
Rachel Campos-Duffy, former reality-TV star and current blogger for Anderson Cooper's AC360 blog, was Elizabeth Hasselbeck's fill-in on today's edition of The View.  As a conservative fill-in, she did not disappoint.

Before diving into the meat of the blog, however, we at NewsBusters would like to congratulate her on this bit of news [emphasis mine]:
RACHEL CAMPOS-DUFFY: Thank you. And, yes, I found happiness after all. And the news is, because I've never come on "The View," as Joy knows, without announcing a pregnancy. And I am having a sixth child and I'm three months pregnant.
That is wonderful news - congratulations to her and her husband Sean.

Now, containing our pro-life glee for a moment, the Viewettes transitioned from a conversation about Campos-Duffy’s happy home life to a discussion of President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize win: