War on Terrorism

AP Ignores Minnesota Terror Suspect's Involvement With Airport De-Icing
By Tom Blumer | December 25, 2015 | 11:58 PM EST

In a year-end interview with National Public Radio, President Barack Obama largely blamed "a saturation of news" coming from a media which "is pursuing ratings" for growing concerns in America over the ability of ISIS and other terrorists to conduct attacks on U.S. soil, and indicated that "it's up to the media to make a determination about how they want to cover things."

It's reasonable to believe that Obama was telling the press corps, which already works furiously to prop him up, that they need to cut back on their reporting of domestic terrorist activities, arrests and court proceedings. It seems fair to say that the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, quickly took that advice to heart in its selective coverage of the saga of Abdirizak Mohamed Warsame, and that its selectivity has kept a noteworthy story very quiet.

NPR’s Inskeep Rules Obama’s Trashing of Media on Terrorism Was ‘Not a Very Outlandish Idea’
By Curtis Houck | December 22, 2015 | 4:18 PM EST

NPR’s Steve Inskeep continued his media tour on Monday promoting his fawning sit-down interview with President by appearing with CNN Tonight host Don Lemon and, when asked about the President attacking the media for supposedly overhyping threats posed by ISIS, Inskeep stood up for the President by suggesting that it was “not a very outlandish idea that he's putting out there.”

Maddow Producer: On Foreign Policy, GOP Has Gone From Dominant to ‘Cringe-Worthy...Pathetic’
By Tom Johnson | December 21, 2015 | 8:48 PM EST

Though Steve Benen, who's also the primary blogger for the MSNBC program's website, is a true-blue liberal, he thinks highly of the foreign-policy chops of some recent Republicans. In a Thursday post, Benen wrote that GOPers such as Richard Lugar and Brent Scowcroft were “learned” and “approached international affairs with [a] degree of maturity.”

That was then; this is now. Benen touched on, among other things, Ted Cruz’s pledge to “carpet bomb” ISIS and Marco Rubio’s remark that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was “not a mistake” to build a case that today’s Republican party “approaches foreign policy…with all the maturity of a Saturday-morning cartoon…The national GOP candidates are speaking to (and for) a party that has no patience for substantive details, historical lessons, nuance, or diplomacy.”

CNN Surprisingly Labels Hillary's 'Dubious' Trump Claim 'Wrong'
By Matthew Balan | December 21, 2015 | 5:08 PM EST

CNN's New Day on Monday actually spotlighted Hillary Clinton's false claim on Saturday that ISIS is "showing videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims in order to recruit more radical jihadists." Chris Cuomo asserted that "it's very hard to translate it any other way...we can't find the videos." When liberal pundit Errol Louis speculated that Clinton's campaign would "migrate towards some kind of clarification," Cuomo replied, "How could you clarify it? How is it anything but wrong?"

CNN and FNC Slam ‘Outrageous’ NYT for Deleting Obama Quote on Cable News/Terrorism; ‘Perplexing’
By Curtis Houck | December 21, 2015 | 4:43 PM EST

Both of the media-centered programs on CNN and FNC covered on Sunday the move by the New York Times from Friday to delete a line from an article about President Obama not fully realizing “the anxiety” of Americans following terror attacks due to his lack of exposure to cable news. Other than NPR TV critic Eric Geggans rushing to Obama’s defense on CNN’s Reliable Sources, the other panelists both denounced the Times for what they described as “outrageous,” “perplexing,” and “potentially damning.”

CNN's Bolduan: Lindsey Graham Debate Performances 'Really Widely Seen as Winners'
By Brad Wilmouth | December 21, 2015 | 3:08 PM EST

Appearing as a guest on CNN's Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield to report on South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham's departure from the GOP presidential race, CNN's Kate Bolduan oddly claimed that the low-polling candidate's debate performances were "really widely, you know, seen as winners," inspiring agreement from host Banfield.

All Beauty, No Brains: Miss Universe Contestants Flub Gun Control and Terrorism Questions
By Alexa Moutevelis Coombs | December 21, 2015 | 5:33 AM EST

Everyone’s talking about how the wrong person was crowned Miss Universe but did you hear what Miss USA said about gun control or Miss France about terrorism?

While Steve Harvey majorly screwed up last night when he announced the wrong 2015 Miss Universe winner, some of the contestants really stepped in it themselves during the question and answer portion of the competition. 

Brit Hume Unloads on Obama over Cable News/Terrorism Comment; Seems ‘Impatient’ with Americans
By Curtis Houck | December 20, 2015 | 3:49 PM EST

Commenting on how The New York Times removed a phrase from a Friday article explaining how President Obama told a group of columnists that he hadn’t consumed enough cable news to fully understand the anxieties of Americans over terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Fox News Sunday panelist Brit Hume lambasted the President for his “snark” and frame of mind that makes him “impatient with the American people.”

CNN's Zakaria: Obama Thinks Cable News 'Massively Exaggerates' ISIS Threat
By Brad Wilmouth | December 19, 2015 | 4:26 PM EST

Appearing as a guest on Friday's Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN, during a discussion of President Barack Obama's news conference, CNN's Fareed Zakaria downplayed the threat to the U.S. posed by ISIS as he forwarded the President's view that ISIS "does not pose an existential threat," noting that President Obama "often points out that gun violence takes many, many more people" in the U.S. than radical Islamic terrorism.

New Republic's Brian Beutler: Democratic Debaters Should Denounce GOP’s ‘Appeal to Paranoia’
By Tom Johnson | December 19, 2015 | 11:49 AM EST

Debbie Wasserman Schultz may not want you to know about it, but there’s a Democratic presidential debate on Saturday evening, and Beutler believes that the candidates therein “would be doing the country a service by placing the right wing appeal to paranoia in its proper context—and then rejecting it forcefully.”

In a Friday piece, Beutler described this week’s Republican presidential debate as “an elaborate group sermon on the importance of being afraid”; opined that the GOP candidates “have made almost no attempt to argue” that their proposals “will reduce the terrorism risk, which is so small to begin with”; and asserted that Republicans’ “position on Jihadi terrorism (that no risk is too small to ignore) is practically the opposite of their position on mass shootings in general (that no risk is worth mitigating at all).”

Networks Censor NYT Deleting Obama Quote Saying He Didn’t ‘Appreciate the Anxiety’ Post-Terror Attacks
By Curtis Houck | December 18, 2015 | 9:29 PM EST

The major broadcast networks on Friday morning and evening showed no interest in reporting to viewers that The New York Times had scrubbed from an article on its website that contained a quote from President Obama telling columnists that he did not watch enough news coverage of the Paris and San Bernardino terror attacks to truly grasp the anxiety of the American people. 

NYT Flushes Obama’s Damning ‘Cable TV’ Admission From Defensive San Bernardino Story
By Clay Waters | December 18, 2015 | 12:18 PM EST

President Obama spoke off the record to news columnists, in a defensive response to Republican criticism that he has seemed passive and uninterested in the face of Islamic terror attacks against the United States. In a news story about the meeting New York Times reporters Peter Baker and Gardiner Harris revealed this damning admission from the president: "In his meeting with the columnists, Mr. Obama indicated that he did not see enough cable television to fully appreciate the anxiety after the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, and made clear that he plans to step up his public arguments." So why was that sentence was deleted from the  version that appeared in Friday’s print edition?