NBC Nightly News offered two stories on Christmas in their December 25 newscast, including a show-ender about “what Christmas means to me.”
Somehow, this perfectly pleasant three-minute segment included lot of talk about family time and presents, and even someone saying “Happy Hanukkah,” but included no one uttering the name “Jesus.” No one defined Christmas as about Christ, NBC?
On Tuesday, August 19, NBC continued the liberal media’s obsession with bullying the NFL’s Washington Redskins into changing its name. Nightly News anchor Brian Williams insisted that the team is having difficulty defending its name because “some consider it a slur.”
Williams introduced the segment by proclaiming “it might have just gotten more difficult for the Washington Redskins to hang on to their name. Two NFL veterans who are now both veteran broadcasters, both say they will not use the team’s name during this coming football season in the booth.” [See video below.]
While all three network morning shows on Wednesday covered the American flags on top of the Brooklyn Bridge being bleached white by unknown vandals, only NBC's Today mentioned that the incident occurred while left-wing New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio was on vacation: "This embarrassment for the city comes while its mayor, Bill de Blasio, vacations in Europe, which itself has brought criticism." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
Correspondent Ron Mott continued: "And adds to other recent high-profile security slip-ups, both at One World Trade Center. Last fall, three men climbed to the top of the tower and base jumped. In March, a 16-year-old escaped detection and made it to the rooftop as well, snapping photos for hours."
Introducing a story on Wednesday's NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer touted the Washington Post publishing the resignation letter of Massachusetts kindergarten teacher Suzi Sluyter, who decided to quit her job after being "frustrated by what she says is too much emphasis on test scores and testing instead of the kids themselves." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
In the report that followed – amid clips of Sluyter reciting her letter on camera – correspondent Ron Mott declared: "A sobering assessment about standardized tests, how children are damaged by what she calls a broken system more focused on scoring them." He soon found who to blame: "When President George W. Bush signed No Child Left Behind into law in 2002, supporters applauded the sweeping reform for holding schools and teachers accountable for student performance. But it wasn't long before complaints surfaced."
For three consecutive nights on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams proclaimed the country to now be in the "post-Newtown era," as he and reporters promoted how "the White House prepares its battle plan" to push for more gun control following the school shooting. [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
On Tuesday, Williams kicked off the coverage by describing how "in our post-Newtown era," the Obama administration was "gearing up for a fight on this issue." In the report that followed, correspondent Ron Mott touted "a growing chorus of calls around the country for gun restrictions, in the wake of a spike in gun-related murders in cities like Chicago and Detroit and last month's tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut."
At about 9:15 p.m. during MSNBC's live coverage of the Republican National Convention, NBC correspondent Ron Mott omitted the word "illegal" as he pressed Arizona Governor Jan Brewer on whether her "hardline stance on immigration" had hurt her politically with Hispanic voters.
On Thursday and Friday, NBC launched an all out assault on Mitt Romney, urging him to release more tax returns. Opening Thursday's NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams scrambled to resurrect the worn-out line of attack: "Talking taxes. Under intense pressure, Mitt Romney talks about what he has paid." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
Introducing the lead story moments later, Williams proclaimed: "It is a topic that won't go away. In the hands of the Democrats, it has dogged Mitt Romney from the start and may follow him all the way to the finish of this campaign." He described Romney's "private life of great wealth" and him being "unwilling to go public with his tax returns beyond the past two years."
In a parting shot at Mitt Romney, NBC's Ron Mott pointed to liberal rag Vanity Fair's hit piece on the candidate's wealth at they very end of Mott's report on the presidential campaign. The very mention of the article was out of place in a report mostly about campaign messaging.
After mentioning Romney's new web video "The Best of America," Mott added that "The ad was released on the heels of a new Vanity Fair article scrutinizing his [Romney's] wealth estimated as high as a quarter-billion dollars and how much of that fortune may sit in tax shelters overseas."
On Sunday's Today show, as he read a brief item on the passing of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, NBC's Ron Mott recounted criticism painting the conservative Israeli leader as "increasing tensions between Israelis and Palestinians" by expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Mott:
Reporting on Rick Santorum leaving the Republican presidential race on Tuesday's NBC Nightly News, correspondent Ron Mott proclaimed: "It was a campaign filled with highly-publicized gaffes....From calling President Obama out on education, to President Kennedy's famed speech on the separation of church and state....Just two of a number of comments he eventually walked back or was pushed to explain."
Mott also depicted Santorum as only appealing to a narrow group of voters: "Santorum's support was mostly rooted in a core of Republican strongholds, where his unapologetic push for social conservative values, something the GOP establishment largely sought to avoid, was enthusiastically embraced by evangelicals."
On Sunday, NBC's David Gregory spent much of Meet the Press blasting Rick Santorum for criticizing President Obama's "phony theology" of liberalism. Earlier that morning, he appeared on the Today show to wonder if the GOP was "comfortable" with that line of criticism and warned: "Does it want to reignite culture wars in America over these kinds of issues?"
On Monday's Today, fill-in co-host Savannah Guthrie followed Gregory's lead as she lead the top of the show with this proclamation: "Culture wars. Rick Santorum is trying to explain his comment that appeared to question President Obama's faith." NBC did not dare accuse the Obama administration of trying to "reignite" a "culture war" over the ObamaCare contraception mandate controversy.
As the broadcast network evening newscasts filed reports this week on the teacher cheating scandal in Atlanta, Georgia, ABC’s World News on its Wednesday show went furthest in seeming to sympathize with the teachers who cheated as correspondent Steve Osunami highlighted complaints about No Child Left Behind’s emphasis on standardized tests to judge teacher performance.
After recounting details of the cheating scandal, in which as many as 178 teachers and principals in Atlanta erased and changed some of the answers on student tests to improve test score statistics for their schools, Osunsami asserted that "everyone here is pointing the finger at No Child Left Behind," and undermined the complaints of parents angry about the scandal: