In an interview with The Economist's John Micklethwait for the web-based Meet the Press feature Press Pass, host David Gregory fretted over the hard left faction of the Democratic Party thinking President Obama has not been liberal enough: "...there are aspects of it that are more progressive, more populist now. And frankly, a bit angry after the Obama years, that it has not been indeed more activist." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
Gregory complained: "...you know, while the right will, you know, be angry about all these regulations that are burdening business, you have many on the left saying we still don't have adequate accountability for those people who unleashed the financial crisis."
David Gregory
By Kyle Drennen | May 19, 2014 | 3:11 PM EDT
By Jeffrey Meyer | May 18, 2014 | 2:05 PM EDT
Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, sat down with David Gregory, moderator of NBC’s Meet the Press and was immediately met with a barrage of questions on Hillary Clinton ranging from Karl Rove’s questioning of Clinton health to her tenure as Secretary of State.
Appearing on Sunday, May 18, Gregory did his best to defend Ms. Clinton from her legacy and asked Priebus “Is she the candidate that you, as the head of the Republican Party, most fear” following a confrontational discussion about her role in investigating the terrorist attack in Benghazi. [See video below.]
By Tim Graham | May 12, 2014 | 8:01 AM EDT
NBC's David Gregory drew special treatment from the District of Columbia for illegally possessing a high-capacity magazine and displaying it on national TV. There must be an exemption for "educational" media-bias reasons. So he won't worry about any fine for illegally parking his SUV the other day outside the "upscale bauble shop" Tiny Jewel Box, whose website advertises items for "Above $5000."
The Washington Post gossips asked Monday, "Hey, isn’t that… Meet the Press host David Gregory, illegally parking his dark-colored SUV on Connecticut Avenue, Thursday afternoon?"
By Scott Whitlock | May 5, 2014 | 12:45 PM EDT
In April, CBS and NBC found no time to cover the protests against Michelle Obama's planned graduation speech to high school students in Kansas. But both networks on Monday hyped the bullying of Condoleezza Rice from speaking to Rutgers University. Some of protest signs included an ugly caricature of the first female African American Secretary of State. Instead of discussing this, CBS This Morning journalist Elaine Quijano reported that "some felt" Rice "didn't deserve the honors because she championed war in Iraq and supported harsh questioning of detainees." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]
Quijano included two clips of liberal students chanting, "Hey, hey. Ho, ho. Condi Rice has got to go!" She then featured a clip of a professor deriding, "A person who has condoned and been involved in torture is not an appropriate person to receive an honorary degree of laws, no less."
By Kyle Drennen | April 28, 2014 | 3:53 PM EDT
At the end of Sunday's NBC Meet the Press, the entire panel of guests was enthralled by President Obama sharing his biggest regret during an overseas townhall event – wishing he spent more time with his mother before her death. After playing a sound bite of the President, host David Gregory gushed: "What a tender moment, and a great life lesson in that, right?" [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
Center for American Progress president Neera Tanden proclaimed: "And I have to say, as a mom, I can't think of a better message myself....I know the President's mother did die at an early age. And he actually talked a lot about her when he was talking about health care, because she didn't have some of the health care protection." That presidential talking point used to sell ObamaCare was proven false in 2011.
By Kyle Drennen | April 28, 2014 | 12:26 PM EDT
In an interview with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Sunday's NBC Meet the Press, host David Gregory attempted to blame the war in Iraq for ongoing Islamic terrorism by citing the former head of Britain's MI-5 claiming the conflict "increased the terrorist threat by convincing more people that Osama bin Laden's claim that Islam was under attack was correct" and "provided an arena for the jihad for which he had called." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
In response, Blair blasted the argument: "We've got to liberate ourselves from this, because we're making a huge error when we end up thinking somehow it's our actions that have caused this....So you can carry on explaining all this by saying, 'It's us. We provoked them. You know, it's really– they're just trying to react against Western Imperialism.' It's nonsense."
By Kyle Drennen | April 28, 2014 | 10:06 AM EDT
Appearing on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday, HBO Real Sports host and former Today show co-host Bryant Gumbel argued that alleged racist comments by NBA Clippers owner Donald Sterling were an indication of broader racism in America: "We historically, whether it's Donald Sterling or Cliven Bundy or Trayvon Martin, we look at a tip of the iceberg and we ignore the mass underneath it. And really, that's what – that's where the problem lies." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
Also on the Sunday morning program, left-wing activist and MSNBC host Al Sharpton quickly voiced his agreement with Gumbel: "I agree with Bryant, the NBA cannot be the endpoint. But it's got to be the beginning to say, 'We've got to deal with this.'"
By Randy Hall | April 24, 2014 | 8:13 PM EDT
Meet the Press host David Gregory has been the focus of turmoil since the Sunday morning NBC program suffered its lowest ratings since 1992 during the past year and was the subject of a meeting with network news president Deborah Turness in March. After that gathering, NBC “doubled down” on Gregory as host of the series, along with giving him additional duties on the network's news website.
However, an article written by Paul Farhi in Sunday's edition of the Washington Post stated that during the first three months of 2012, the NBC program finished a distant third, far behind CBS's Face the Nation and This Week With George Stephanopoulos on ABC. Just four days later, Turness sent a memo to the show's staff declaring that coverage of Gregory's troubles has been “vindictive, personal and above all -- untrue.”
By Michelle Malkin | April 23, 2014 | 12:25 PM EDT
I've always thought entrenched left-wing journalists in Washington needed their heads examined. Much to my satisfaction, it appears the corporate media bosses of at least one Beltway anchor now agree.
According to The Washington Post this week, NBC News hired a "psychological consultant" to examine why flailing Meet the Press moderator David Gregory has been bombing in the ratings. The overpriced shrinks (NBC prefers the euphemism "brand consultants") came from the New York-based brand fixer-upper Elastic Strategy.
NBC Tried 'Unusual' Psychological Assessment to Figure Out David Gregory and His Flagging 'Meet The Press' Ratings
By Tim Graham | April 21, 2014 | 8:36 AM EDT Washington Post media reporter Paul Farhi wrote a big Style section front-pager for Monday on how NBC's Meet the Press, "Sunday's most venerable news show has stumbled in the ratings."
The shocking paragraph that will get discussed around Washington today is that NBC commissioned a psychological consultant to figure how who MTP host David Gregory is, and what makes him tick. Or maybe, why people just don't like him very much:
By Jeffrey Meyer | April 13, 2014 | 1:48 PM EDT
Over the last seven days, three major revelations have emerged surrounding the IRS’ targeting of Tea Party groups. Despite the new stories, on Sunday April 13, three of the four Sunday shows, NBC’s Meet the Press, CBS’s Face the Nation and ABC’s This Week, all ignored them, whereas Fox News Sunday was the only program to mention the IRS at all.
On Wednesday April 9, The Washington Times revealed that a Dallas IRS office was covered with Vote for Obama stickers and engaging in campaign cheerleading. On the same day, The Hill broke a story revealing that Lois Lerner fed tax information to Elijah Cummings (D-MD) who sits on the committee in charge of overseeing the IRS investigation. And finally, the House Ways and Means Committee voted last week to refer Lois Lerner for criminal charges, yet the big three didn’t mention any of these stories on Sunday.
By Tom Blumer | April 12, 2014 | 12:47 AM EDT
Adrianne Haslet-Davis is a Boston Marathon bombing survivor who insists that she not be called a "victim" ("I am not defined by what happened in my life. I am a survivor, defined by how I live my life").
The Boston Herald writes that "Haslet-Davis became a symbol of Boston Strong when she made good on her vow to dance again in a front-page Herald story last year. This past month she performed a rumba on a bionic leg designed by an MIT brainiac who is himself a double amputee. The performance was at a TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference in Vancouver." On Friday, NBC News, which three weeks ago posted a story on Haslet-Davis's first post-bombing performance, deliberately and by its own admission broke a promise it had made to her as a condition for her appearance in a taped panel discussion in advance of the network's next Meet the Press program.