On Thursday’s PBS NewsHour, anchor Gwen Ifill fed the tired old stereotype that the Tea Party ruins everything.
During a discussion about the nation’s political outlook for the coming year, Ifill posed this question to The Washington Post’s Michael Gerson:
Gwen Ifill
By Paul Bremmer | January 31, 2014 | 2:32 PM EST
By Paul Bremmer | November 13, 2013 | 6:00 PM EST
On Tuesday’s PBS NewsHour, anchor Gwen Ifill interviewed former Vice President Dick Cheney about his notorious heart troubles as documented in his new book, Heart: An American Medical Odyssey. Apparently unwilling to let a good conversation about healthcare go to waste, Ifill spent the latter half of the interview trying to use Cheney’s experience as an infomercial for why America needs ObamaCare.
Ifill began to steer the conversation in ObamaCare’s direction in a subtle manner:
By Matthew Sheffield | November 2, 2013 | 7:00 AM EDT
Over the years, we’ve written a lot about long, slow ratings collapse of broadcast news. But ABC, CBS, and NBC aren’t the only ones experiencing this decline. As reported by David Zurawik of the Baltimore Sun, the ratings for PBS NewsHour show are almost in a freefall, even compared to their commercial competitors.
By its own count, NewsHour had 2.5 million viewers in 2005. This year the show is at 1.3 million. That’s an astonishing drop, nearly 50 percent, unmatched by any of the commercial broadcast evening news shows.
WashPost, PBS Boost Obama Faith Director's Book Without Asking About His Urge to Mislead on Reverend Wright
By Tim Graham | October 26, 2013 | 9:56 PM EDT When George W. Bush's faith-based initiative staffer David Kuo came out with a book whacking away at Bush, the media were enthralled (excerpted lovingly by Time magazine and interviewed on 60 Minutes). Now under Obama, they're helping former faith-based initiatives director Joshua Dubois sell his new book "The President's Devotional." In Saturday's Washington Post, religion reporter Elizabeth Tenety asked questions that made it sound like Dubois wrote his own questions: "Let’s talk about your work with the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. What are you most proud of from your time there?"
On the PBS NewsHour Wednesday, anchor Gwen Ifill danced politely around Obama's rare church attendance (especially compared to his golf course time), and raised Rev. Jeremiah Wright just as a time when prayer helped Obama, not as a time Dubois admitted in his book that he wanted to spin around the whole truth:
By Matthew Sheffield | August 29, 2013 | 6:48 PM EDT
In remarks that are sure to dismay the race-baiting crew at MSNBC, President Obama admitted in an interview yesterday that he does not think that his conservative critics are racially motivated.
Obama made those remarks in a very flattering discussion with PBS NewsHour hosts Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff after he gave an address commemorating the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
By Paul Bremmer | July 8, 2013 | 5:38 PM EDT
We’re halfway through 2013, and PBS’s Washington Week used last Friday’s episode to reflect on the past six months of D.C. politics. During the course of the reflections, moderator Gwen Ifill trotted out the oft-uttered liberal complaint about “distractions” that have impeded President Obama’s second-term agenda so far.
She lamented, “You know, the one thing that's been a common theme throughout this first six months has been distractions. The ways in which pure politics has driven what ends up happening.”
By Randy Hall | June 4, 2013 | 1:57 PM EDT
Here's an interesting example of your tax dollars at work: Gwen Ifill, a newscaster for the Public Broadcasting System, uses her television programs to staunchly defend Eric Holder, the scandal-ridden U.S. attorney general, and the Internal Revenue System, which has been accused of targeting conservative organizations that apply for a tax-exempt status.
Not content with using her roles as managing editor and moderator of the “Washington Week” program and as a senior correspondent for the “PBS NewsHour,” Ifill took her crusade online on Sunday, when she posted on Twitter that it's “Fun to see the same (named & unnamed) folks calling for Holder resignation who always have” and asserted that “people don't want to know the details back and forth” of the IRS targeting.
By Paul Bremmer | May 23, 2013 | 4:58 PM EDT
On last Friday’s Washington Week, PBS moderator Gwen Ifill brought in a panel of four liberal journalists to dissect the three scandals that have plagued the Obama administration the past couple of weeks. Predictably, most of the panelists attempted to downplay the seriousness of the Benghazi fiasco.
Midway through the Benghazi discussion, Ifill turned to The Washington Post’s Ed O’Keefe and posed the question that has surely been on every left-wing reporter’s mind for months: “But Ed, why is this -- why is this stuck? Why is this a story that never went away?”
Ifill Doesn't Ask Democrat If Gun Control Bill Would've Stopped Newtown, Asks Why The Legislation Failed
By Matt Vespa | April 18, 2013 | 6:15 PM EDT With the monumental collapse of the president’s anti-gun agenda, many are wondering if both sides will “go back into their corners” on gun control. Every single measure in this new bill failed, which elicited the wrath of the president yesterday in the Rose Garden. During the April 17 broadcast of the PBS NewsHour, Gwen Ifill asked why these measures failed to pass, mentioned the popularity of background checks, and failed to press Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) on past statements about how this bill really wouldn’t have prevented Sandy Hook ergo more mass shootings.
In fairness, Ifill also had Lawrence Keane of the National Shooting Sports Foundation and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Democrat from Conneticut, on the program to discuss the failed bill. While he said his organization supported some of the amendments in the bill, they couldn’t back it due to the background check provision, noting it would have harmed gun sellers who rely heavily on weekend sales, when most customers come to their stores [emphasis mine]:
By Paul Bremmer | March 21, 2013 | 5:52 PM EDT
Support for same-sex marriage is on the rise in America, and PBS couldn’t be happier about it. On Tuesday’s NewsHour, the taxpayer-subsidized network ran a story that betrayed more than a hint of elation at the growing acceptance of gay marriage among both politicians and the public. Leading the cheers was co-anchor Gwen Ifill, who narrated the story and moderated the discussion that followed.
At the top of the segment, Ifill promised her viewers that there “ appears to be an evolving sea change on attitudes toward gay marriage.” She then began her package by insisting that, “Steadily and remarkably, public and political support for same-sex marriage is on the rise.”
By Matt Vespa | February 6, 2013 | 6:33 PM EST
In the wake of the leaked Department of Justice memo detailing the legality of targeted killings by drones on American citizens, the PBS NewsHour found it fitting to have the ACLU defend its position in why these strikes are troubling, and why American-born al-Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki should’ve been kept alive to plan acts of terror against the United States.
Of course, this is maddening to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Liberal publications, like The Nation, detail the dark future of drone warfare, and some anti-drone journalists, like Conor Fierdorsdorff of The Atlantic, have compared Obama to Bush. However, even with the media either criticizing, or ignoring, this development, last night’s broadcast of the PBS NewsHour didn’t take into account the hypocrisy of liberals who were on the warpath a few years prior after release of Bush memos related to enhanced interrogation techniques.
By Matt Vespa | January 22, 2013 | 6:27 PM EST
During PBS’ coverage of the 2013 Inauguration, syndicated columnist Mark Shields, Gwen Ifill, and Yale University’s Beverly Gage seemed to have forgotten what the definition of liberal is within the context of Obama’s second inaugural address. In fact, Gage said that this wasn’t an “endorsement of collective liberalism,” and Shields called it more “humanitarian.”
The non-taxpayer subsidized liberal media has been more honest. Today’s New York Times said Obama offered a “liberal vision.” Slate’s John Dickerson, who infamously called for Obama to destroy the GOP, called the 44th president’s address “a liberal love letter.” ABC finally figured out that Obama is a progressive liberal.