Hours after Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards testified Tuesday before the House Oversight Committee concerning the videos that have embroiled the abortion provider in scandal over the selling of aborted baby parts, the “big three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC rushed to the defense of the “unfazed” and “spirited” Richards as she “endured a five-hour interrogation” by the GOP.
Jonathan Karl
While the “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC all covered on Monday night the developments at the United Nations (U.N.) and the meeting between President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin, ABC’s World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News failed to go the distance and report that Obama’s disastrous rebel training initiative in Syria had been suspended. In contrast, the CBS Evening News not only covered the announcement from the Pentagon but led the newscast with the story.

Two journalists on Friday's NBC Nightly News played up how the supposed "far right" of the Republican Party pushed out Rep. John Boehner, who announced earlier in the day that he would be stepping down as Speaker of the House. Lester Holt underlined that Boehner is "resigning from Congress at the end of next month in the face of a challenge from members of the far right of his party, who believe he's gone soft on Democrats."
Mere moments into House Speaker John Boehner’s press conference on Friday discussing his resignation on October 30, the “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC were quick to chastise conservative House members on Boehner’s “far right flank” that compose the “no compromise crowd” and “some grassroots conservatives who happened to be elected members of the House.”
On Wednesday night, ABC was the lone network to omit from their coverage of the Iran deal rally that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei offered a new rant hours earlier in which he promised the country will not cooperate with the U.S. on any other issue beyond the deal in addition to predicting that Israel would not exist in 25 years.

Friday's CBS Evening News stood out for not covering Hillary Clinton's interview with NBC's Andrew Mitchell. The newscast didn't even mention the former first lady during their 2016 election coverage. Instead, Scott Pelley played up how Donald Trump "seems to stumble a lot, but never seems to fall" – specifically, his confused answers on foreign policy during an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. Pelley also covered Vice President Joe Biden "agonizing publicly about whether he would run" for president.
On Monday night, all three of the major broadcast networks covered the impending release of more e-mails from Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server, but largely kept their coverage to a minimum before moving onto dissecting the latest 2016 polls on the Republican and Democratic sides. All told, the networks spent one minute and 42 seconds on Clinton’s e-mails and news that 150 of them have been retroactively deemed classified while Spanish-language network Univision spent devoted a 25-second news brief to the issue.

ABC, CBS, and NBC 's evening newscasts on Friday all failed to cover Hillary Clinton's latest inflammatory attack on Republicans in which she made a thinly-veiled comparison to the Holocaust: "I find it the height of irony that a party, which espouses small government, would want to unleash a massive law enforcement effort...to go and literally pull people out of their homes and their workplaces, round them up, put them...in buses, boxcars – in order to take them across our border."
On the Friday morning network newscasts, CBS This Morning and NBC’s Today showed no interest in picking up on an ABC News report that former President Bill Clinton sought approval from his wife’s State Department for speeches that involved African dictators and North Korea with the speaking fee for the former engagement worth $650,000.
On Tuesday night, CBS and NBC teamed with Spanish-language networks Telemundo and Univision to hide from their viewers news that U.S. Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy has been using a private e-mail server to conduct government business and send sensitive material. Surprisingly, ABC’s World News Tonight stepped up to the plate with a scant 50-second report on this new e-mail scandal by chief White House correspondent and a lead in by fill-in anchor and Clinton Foundation donor George Stephanopoulos.
NBC Nightly News continued on Monday to sing the accolades of Vice President Joe Biden amid rumors of a possible 2016 presidential run, declaring that he’s “electrified the political world” as he met with “liberal icon Elizabeth Warren,” while ABC’s World News Tonight ignored declared candidate Hillary Clinton’s e-mail scandal. NBC's Peter Alexander began his report by gushing: “Talk about a full plate. Two not so secret lunches in three days for Joe Biden. First with liberal icon Elizabeth Warren.”

On Wednesday morning, the “Big Three” (ABC, CBS, and NBC) networks eagerly pounced on video of Florida Senator Marco Rubio mistakenly hitting a boy with a football while throwing him a pass, giving the video a combined 2 minutes 43 seconds of coverage from 7-9:00 a.m. NBC’s Today introduced its broadcast with Matt Lauer declaring “Rubi-ow. A pass from Senator Marco Rubio to a young fan doesn't quite go quite as planned...Why the presidential hopeful says the quarterback always gets the blame.”
