On Monday, ABC and NBC's morning newscasts both touted the upcoming congressional report on the CIA's post-9/11 interrogation techniques as "explosive" and "damning." However, neither network pointed out that it was Democratic members on the Senate Intelligence Committee that commissioned the document. By contrast, CBS This Morning reported that "Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee are set to release a controversial report on the CIA."
Martha Raddatz
By Jeffrey Meyer | November 16, 2014 | 12:10 PM EST
It took nine days, but ABC and NBC finally covered the controversial videos of ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber making disparaging remarks about the American voters. Since the first video surfaced, CBS had been the only “big three” (ABC, CBS, and NBC) network to cover the Gruber video, but on Sunday, November 16 ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos and NBC’s Meet the Press briefly mentioned the videos. However, as of this writing, ABC and NBC’s morning and evening newscasts have yet to mention the Gruber controversy once.
By Matthew Balan | November 12, 2014 | 9:30 PM EST
ABC, CBS, and NBC's evening newscasts on Wednesday glossed over the radical left-wing ideology of the Turkish protesters who assaulted three U.S. sailors in Istanbul earlier in the day. ABC's Martha Raddatz reported that the "the attackers [are] members of an ultra-nationalist group called the Turkish Youth Union, angry at what it calls 'American imperialism.'" NBC's Brian Williams underlined that "these were apparently the actions of a fringe group."
By Curtis Houck | October 14, 2014 | 5:46 PM EDT
On Friday afternoon, Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis and her campaign released a new ad that took aim at her Republican opponent Greg Abbott as a “hypocrite” for supposedly not caring about the disabled after becoming a paraplegic in 1984.
Since the despicable ad aired, only one story has been offered on the morning or evening newscasts of the major broadcast networks through Monday night. That single story came on Tuesday morning during the 7:30 a.m. half-hour of NBC’s Today by NBC News national correspondent Peter Alexander and lasted just over two minutes.
By Tom Blumer | October 12, 2014 | 6:06 PM EDT
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey's told Marth Raddatz on ABC's "This Week" that ISIS fighters got to within 16 miles of Baghdad's airport in Iraq earlier this week. Framing that distance in a way those in the nation's out of touch Beltway political class will understand, that's the driving distance from the U.S. Capitol Building to Tysons Corner Mall in Northern Virginia. The U.S. had to call in Apache helicopters to prevent Iraqi forces from being overrun.
ABC's Benjamin Bell, in preparing his 12:50 p.m. report on the Dempsey interview, saved that startling piece of information for his fourth paragraph and kept it out of his headline. It's almost as if he was hoping that no one will want to watch the report's accompanying video, which is nowhere near as blasé about that news.
By Jeffrey Meyer | October 12, 2014 | 12:06 PM EDT
On Sunday’s This Week, ABC’s Jim Avila gave Democrat Julian Castro, newly appointed Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, nearly 5 minutes of promotional airtime to play up his political ambitions. The ABC reporter began the Castro advertisement by declaring “he's just 77 days into his new job, but ever since his swearing in, so many Democrats have skipped ahead trying to figure out what's next for the rising star? Could he be on a presidential ticket in 2016?”
Networks Defend Obama as ‘Critics Pounced’ and Took 'Too Literally' His ‘No Strategy Yet’ Remarks on ISIS
By Curtis Houck | August 29, 2014 | 12:50 PM EDT On Friday morning, the major broadcast networks were out in full force to defend President Obama after his remarks at a press conference Thursday afternoon in which he said that “we don’t have a strategy yet” in how to militarily address the Islamic terrorist group ISIS in Syria.
Leading the way was NBC’s Today, where co-host Matt Lauer told NBC News political director and moderator of Meet the Press Chuck Todd that “[c]ritics pounced” when Obama made that remark and wondered if they took “his words too literally.” [MP3 audio here; Video below]
By Jack Coleman | August 19, 2014 | 8:35 PM EDT
Ever since police in Ferguson, Mo., released surveillance footage that appears to show Michael Brown stealing cigars from a convenience store minutes before he was shot to death after a confrontation with a local cop, we've heard an endless chorus of perceived wisdom that releasing the video was certain to cause more chaos.
The fact that civil disorder grew far worse in the wake of the video's release, and only 24 hours after relative calm when the Missouri highway patrol assumed jurisdiction over the case, has repeatedly been cited as evidence that putting the footage in the public domain was sheer folly. (Audio clips after the jump)
By Matthew Balan | August 9, 2014 | 12:30 AM EDT
The Big Three networks steered clear of labeling the Islamist group ISIS "terrorists" on their evening newscasts on Friday. Instead, ABC's World News and CBS Evening News labeled the genocidal radicals "militants." NBC Nightly News used the more benign "rebels" in their coverage of the group's latest attacks on the Kurdish part of Iraq.
The closest that a journalist at ABC, CBS, or NBC got to using the "terrorist" label was Scott Pelley's teaser at the very top of CBS Evening News: [MP3 audio available here; video below the jump]
By Scott Whitlock | July 14, 2014 | 12:59 PM EDT
Echoing past media defenses of Jimmy Carter, Good Morning America's Martha Raddatz on Monday indicated that there are simply too many international flare-ups for John Kerry and the Obama administration to effectively focus on just one. Referring to the ongoing violence between the Israelis and the Palestinians, Raddatz lamented, "But diplomats really only so much bandwidth when they're dealing with things. They have to prioritize." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]
The journalist sympathized, adding that such prioritization is "very, very difficult right now with what's going on in the world." Explaining why it's so hard for the administration to handle these problems, Raddatz reminded, "But there really are so many crises that he's dealing with right now. You've got Afghanistan. You've got Iraq."
By Jeffrey Meyer | July 6, 2014 | 12:02 PM EDT
ABC This Week co-host Martha Raddatz did her best to spin away the crisis at the border by pushing White House talking points during an interview with Governor Rick Perry (R-TX) on Sunday.
Raddatz insisted that the crisis was a result of a 2008 law signed by President Bush, with no consideration given to President Obama’s role in the surge of illegal border crossings.
By Matthew Balan | June 12, 2014 | 11:02 PM EDT
Thursday's World News on ABC led with the rapid advance of an Islamist group into the heart of Iraq, but glossed over how correspondent Jonathan Karl grilled outgoing White House Press Secretary Jay Carney over how this development casts doubt on two of President Obama's supposed "top foreign policy accomplishments: ending the war in Iraq and decimating and destroying core al-Qaeda."
Terry Moran noted during how "President Obama today, resisting pleas from the Iraqi government for immediate U.S. air strikes to turn the tide, tread cautiously." Martha Raddatz later underlined that "Obama said himself today that these fighters could end up being a significant threat to our homeland." But neither journalist mentioned how their colleague sparred with Carney about the President's past boasts about Iraq and al Qaeda: [YouTube.com video of the exchange below the jump]