On Friday’s PBS NewsHour, pseudo-conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks offered disbelief that Donald Trump’s anti-amnesty position on immigration would win the day with Republicans. They’re not “complete idiots,” he suggested. Brooks insisted the “talk radio part” of the Republican party is “waning, frankly,” and that the platform of Dole, McCain, and George W. Bush would return.
The PBS anchor was having trouble believing the Republicans weren’t doomed already.
During Hillary Clinton’s first national interview on CNN Tuesday, the Democratic presidential candidate was pressed about her use of a private e-mail server during her time as Secretary of State, but both PBS and NPR ignored the topic during their post-interview coverage on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.
For the third time in just under three weeks, the major broadcast networks ignored news related to the Obama administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with the latest news coming on Wednesday that the agency has announced its goal to regulate aircraft emissions in a similar fashion that it does for automobiles and powerplants. FNC's Special Report and the PBS NewsHour, however, found time to inform their viewers of the agency’s latest foray into the economy.
On Friday’s PBS NewsHour, liberal political commentator Mark Shields proclaimed “one of the great frauds that Republicans have perpetrated over the past generation has been this idea of voter fraud, that people are showing up, 31 cases in 14 years...So, I think she’s absolutely right. It is our responsibility to make voting available to as many people as possible who want to vote.”
In a Thursday column, PBS ombudsman Michael Getler took NewsHour anchor Judy Woodruff to task for failing to disclose a 2010 donation to the Clinton Foundation: “It is always a bad idea for a journalist to give money to a political campaign or anything even remotely connected to the activities of a politician or party, or an organization that they might cover. You just shouldn’t do it.”
The Wall Street Journal reported on the Stephanopoulos scandal on Friday, and found another national TV anchor in the database. “Judy Woodruff, the co-anchor and managing editor of PBS NewsHour, gave $250 in 2010 to the foundation’s aid efforts for victims of the Haiti earthquake.” She was a senior correspondent then, before Jim Lehrer retired.
Woodruff initially recalled the donation as being for $1,000, but based the $250 amount as the one on her 2010 tax return. Woodruff tried to make it sound bipartisan:
On Thursday night’s PBS NewsHour, they devoted two segments to the forthcoming Summit of the Americas and like Andrea Mitchell, PBS correspondent Margaret Warner felt it necessary to document how Latin American countries think Team Obama’s actions toward Venezuela “smacked of U.S. bullying” and even “imperialist meddling.”
It might seem a bit perverse, but the government-funded channel was calmly explaining to viewers that standing up for dissidents is a diplomatic fiasco.
On Friday, March 6, liberal columnist Mark Shields used his weekly appearance on PBS NewsHour to harshly criticize Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before Congress. Speaking to co-host Judy Woodruff, Shields proclaimed that Netanyahu “made a very impassioned, I would say, eloquent indictment, criticism of the president’s policy. The Republicans were rapturous. They were adulatory. Even they were post-orgasmic.”
On Friday’s PBS NewsHour, New York Times columnists David Brooks and Mark Shields used their weekly appearance to trash the attendees of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) as representing the extreme far right of the Republican Party.
When it came to the major broadcast networks covering the full congressional passage of the Keystone XL oil pipeline on their Wednesday night newscasts, ABC’s World News Tonight with David Muir and the CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley chose to ignore the story completely and left their viewers in the dark on this issue. Meanwhile, NBC Nightly News made it the second topic covered on its broadcast and while it was the first network evening news mention of Keystone since all three did on January 6
On Friday’s PBS NewsHour, New York Times columnist David Brooks and PBS commentator Mark Shields teamed up to praise President Obama’s controversial remarks about Christianity at the National Prayer Breakfast as well as to shame the GOP over two potential presidential candidates' recent vaccine gaffes. Speaking to co-host Judy Woodruff, Brooks slammed Senator Rand Paul and Governor Chris Christie as “kowtowing toward people who are suspicious of institutions and therefore suspicious of belief. And there has to be a leadership test for candidates.”
The U.S. Senate took the step Thursday of approving the Keystone XL oil pipeline in a bipartisan fashion by a margin of 62-to-36, with nine Democrats joining 53 Republicans to pass it for the first time after failing to do so under the previous Congress.
When the major English and Spanish language networks aired their Thursday evening newscasts, however, the news of the bill’s passage was nowhere to be found. Not a single second of coverage on Keystone appeared on English language networks ABC, CBS, and NBC in addition to Spanish-language networks Telemundo and Univision.