Following President Obama’s comments at the G-7 summit on Monday about the United States still having “no complete strategy” for fighting ISIS, NBC Nightly News went to work in spinning for the President by touting his reasoning and neglecting to mention that he uttered similar remarks back on August 28, 2014. In contrast, ABC's World News Tonight and the CBS Evening News noted the similarity in Obama’s remarks on Monday and in August with multiple doses of criticism for the commander-in-chief.
Lester Holt
By Curtis Houck | June 4, 2015 | 8:52 PM EDT
Former Texas Republican Governor Rick Perry announced a second presidential campaign on Thursday afternoon, but viewers on the Thursday evening network newscasts may have missed the news altogether if not careful since the “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC gave Perry less than a minute and a half of combined airtime.
By Curtis Houck | June 2, 2015 | 10:12 PM EDT
Reporting on Tuesday’s NBC Nightly News, NBC's Chuck Todd hyped the size of the 2016 Republican presidential campaign with the rise in “vanity candidates” and wondered to GOP presidential candidate Lindsey Graham if “Hispanics are justified in believing the Republican Party doesn't care about them right now.”
By Matthew Balan | May 29, 2015 | 8:56 PM EDT
On Friday's World News Tonight, ABC's David Muir avoided mentioning the critics as he reported on the Obama administration removing Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. Instead, Muir spotlighted how "President Obama [told] us back in December his plans to restore diplomatic ties with the Cuban government," and that during a January 2015 visit to the island country, "the children of Cuba [told] us they want to visit America."
By Curtis Houck | May 28, 2015 | 9:42 PM EDT
Continuing the media narrative that climate change is the cause of flooding in Texas, NBC Nightly News did its part on Thursday night in not only accomplishing that but also linking climate change to the drought in California and a “weather whiplash” that’s being seen across the country. Anchor Lester Holt began by observing “[t]he relentless rain, while enormously destructive, seemed to have helped reverse years of drought in Texas” while Californians now “are wondering” if it’s their turn “for an abrupt weather whiplash of their own from dry to deluge.” Miguel Almaguer declared: “Scientists say climate change is exacerbating the wild swings.”
By Curtis Houck | May 27, 2015 | 9:40 PM EDT
Following Rick Santorum’s announcement Wednesday that he will mount a bid for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, CBS and NBC largely punted on news of a seventh Republican candidate entering the field with a combined 37 seconds of airtime on their Wednesday evening newscasts. Over on the Spanish-language networks, however, the coverage was even less as there was zero mention of Santorum’s announcement on the evening newscasts of MundoFox, Telemundo, and Univision.
By Curtis Houck | May 20, 2015 | 9:32 PM EDT
The Wednesday editions of ABC’s World News Tonight and CBS Evening News ignored the news that Republican Senator and 2016 presidential candidate Rand Paul (Ky.) launched a new marathon speech on the Senator floor hours earlier in protest of the federal government’s collection of phone records. While ABC and CBS failed to cover this story, NBC Nightly News offered a 26-second news brief on the issue.
By Curtis Houck | May 18, 2015 | 8:54 PM EDT
CBS and NBC continued their refusal on Monday evening to criticize the Obama administration’s handing of Iraq and so-called policy on ISIS as the Islamic terror group seized control of Ramadi over the weekend. While those two networks continued to spin for the White House, ABC bucked the trend from the network morning newscasts by providing a blunt critique of the Obama administration for “painting far too rosy a picture of how this war is going for far too long.”
By Matthew Balan | May 15, 2015 | 9:39 PM EDT
Friday's NBC Nightly News picked up where Today left off earlier in the day by hyping former Florida Governor Jeb Bush's "long week," after his Monday remark that he would have authorized an invasion of Iraq if he had been president in 2003. Lester Holt echoed Savannah Guthrie in underling that Bush has "struggled since then to put daylight between him and his brother's legacy on Iraq." He also asserted that Karl Rove's refusal to endorse him during his interview on Today was "another potential blow...to Bush's White House ambitions."
By Curtis Houck | May 14, 2015 | 9:17 PM EDT
On Thursday night, the major English-language broadcast networks again covered possible 2016 Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush’s comments about the Iraq War and featured ABC and NBC omitting the fact that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton voted to authorize the Iraq War when she was a U.S. Senator. Additionally, all three network evening newscasts continued to ignore how Hillary Clinton has yet to answer a question from the press in over three weeks and only 13 questions total since she launched her campaign on April 12.
By Curtis Houck | May 13, 2015 | 9:50 PM EDT
Despite now knowing that the Amtrak train that derailed outside of Philadelphia on Tuesday night was going more than double the speed limit, the “big three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC continued pushing the need for more infrastructure funding and an increase in Amtrak’s budget on their Wednesday evening newscasts. In addition, CBS and NBC failed to mention the fact that train engine in question was only a year old.
By Curtis Houck | May 12, 2015 | 11:20 PM EDT
On Tuesday, ABC’s World News Tonight and the CBS Evening News chose to ignore news that Senate Democrats voted to block debate on a series of trade measures pushed by President Barack Obama as part of a push to eventually approve the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal. NBC Nightly News did cover the story with a news brief by Lester Holt who billed the failed vote as “[a] major setback today for one of President Obama’s top economic priorities” that “was delivered by the President’s own party.”