During a hard-hitting question and answer session with Jill Biden on Wednesday's NBC Today, co-host Tamron Hall wondered what made drew the Second Lady to the Vice President: "What made you fall for Joe Biden? Was it his humor? What was it?" Certainly not a question Lynne Cheney was ever asked about Dick Cheney on the morning show. [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
Tamron Hall
By Kyle Drennen | April 2, 2014 | 4:13 PM EDT
Forget all the unanswered questions about ObamaCare or the President's sinking poll numbers or the Democratic Party's vulnerability in the midterm elections, on Wednesday's NBC Today, all that was wiped away by President Obama taking a selfie with Red Sox player David Ortiz. [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
As fill-in news anchor Tamron Hall put it, "In a town where they don't agree on a lot, I think everyone agrees that this was a pretty cool moment....The Red Sox meeting with the President.... Big Papi [David Ortiz] with the President preparing to take his official photo. Then, he went rogue....The Big Papi selfie....Look at those smiles there. A good day in Washington."
By Paul Bremmer | April 2, 2014 | 3:52 PM EDT
MSNBC loves to find a racial controversy in the most unexpected of places and on Wednesday’s NewsNation, anchor Tamron Hall seized a golden opportunity to do just that. Hall brought on Sgt. Jasmine Jacobs, a soldier who started a White House petition asking the president to force the U.S. Army to reconsider its updated appearance and grooming regulations.
Hall explained the problem as she opened the story:
By Kyle Drennen | March 26, 2014 | 10:56 AM EDT
On Wednesday, all three network morning shows repeated the White House line that the reason for delaying the March 31 ObamaCare enrollment deadline was due to a last-minute "surge" of people signing up. In a 20-second news brief on NBC's Today, fill-in news reader Tamron Hall announced "a reprieve this morning for people who've been trying to sign up for ObamaCare," before noting that "the Health and Human Services Department says there has been a last-minute surge in demand." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
During a 17-second news brief on ABC's Good Morning America, fill-in news reader Amy Robach gently described the law's new setback as a sign-up "grace period" and declared: "...the White House predicts a crush of applicants in the final hours could cause a computer traffic jam."
Happy St. Patrick's Day From MSNBC: 'Tradition of Irish Catholicism Was a Bigotry Against LGBT People'
By Kyle Drennen | March 18, 2014 | 3:54 PM EDT
On Monday's MSNBC News Nation, host Tamron Hall teed up Michael O'Loughlin from The Advocate to promote his screed against the St. Patrick's Day parade organizers in New York and Boston for not allowing gay demonstrations at the respective events. Hall wondered: "What do you believe is the hold up at this point?...you see polls across the country where people, in their views of same-sex marriage of people who are gay and lesbian, greatly changed over the past ten years or so." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
O'Loughlin ranted: "You know, no one loves tradition like the Irish. And unfortunately, part of the tradition of Irish Catholicism was a bigotry against LGBT people." Moments later he predicted: "Give it a year and who knows where we'll be." Hall agreed: "Absolutely. And give it a year and the list of sponsors who may pull out of these parades could be longer as well."
By Matthew Balan | March 8, 2014 | 2:46 PM EST
Viewers of ABC's morning and evening newscasts on Friday would have been left unaware of President Obama's gaffe of elementary proportions during a White House concert on Thursday evening. Both Good Morning America and World News omitted how the Democrat left out the first "E" in the title of Aretha Franklin's most famous song: "When Aretha first told us what R-S-P-E-C-T meant to her."
By contrast, the network's competitors at CBS and NBC covered the President's trip-up on their morning shows and evening news broadcasts. NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams even mentioned a infamous spelling flub by a former Republican vice president: [MP3 audio available here; video below the jump]
By Randy Hall | January 30, 2014 | 10:09 PM EST
During an interview with Lloyd Grove of the Daily Beast website, MSNBC president Phil Griffin strained at gnats when he stated that his network “has never had an ideology” but insisted that the dominant Fox News Channel does.
“An ideology is a single thought across all programs,” he said. “We’ve never had that.” However, Griffin asserted, MSNBC instead has “a progressive sensibility,” which he claimed is not the same as an ideology. “Obviously, I hire people who fit the sensibility” because “we do stay true to facts. You have to build your argument. That's why I call it a sensibility.”
By Jeffrey Meyer | January 7, 2014 | 5:28 PM EST
It should come as no surprise that when Republicans don’t support liberal polices such as raising the minimum wage, expanding Medicaid or extending food stamp benefits that MSNBC will slander them as heartless and compassionless. That was the basic message during a segment on January 8 between fill-in host Richard Lui and NBC News Senior Political Editor Mark Murray.
The segment began with Lui hyping a NBC News “First Read” piece discussing how the GOP needs to close its “empathy gap” with Democrats and essentially support liberal policies in order to do so. Mark Murray began his analysis by claiming that, “2013 wasn't a really good year for the Republican Party delivering on what that RNC after-election autopsy recommended.” [See video after jump.]
'Today' Also Downplays and Truncates Obama's Admission of False 'Keep Your Plan' Guarantee as Quote of the Year
By Tom Blumer | December 17, 2013 | 1:14 PM EST Earlier this morning (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), in a post primarily about the Associated Press's whitewashing of President Barack Obama's quote of the year acknowledging that his multi-year guarantee — "If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health clinic care plan, period" — was, ahem, "not ... accurate" (Obama's words), I noted that the related web page for NBC's "Today" show followed the AP's lead by claiming that Obama's original promise and not the admission was the quote of the year.
The video clip present at that same web page is both funny and sad. It's funny, because Tamron Hall began her report by ignorantly asserting that Toronto Mayor Rob Ford is "everyone's favorite mayor from the Northeast." It's sad, because like the AP, NBC's video truncated Obama's actual November 14 admission and let it slide without further comment, effectively giving what Ford said about his drinking and use of drugs more weight than Obama's admission that he lied to the American people for years. The clip follows the jump:
By Ken Shepherd | November 26, 2013 | 2:54 PM EST
Leave it to MSNBC to see Thanksgiving as a time to be thankful for ObamaCare, Wendy Davis, same-sex marriage, and John Kerry hammering out an interim nuclear deal with Iran.
"In a year where Congress’ approval rating has reached an all time low, an embattled President Obama faces the healthcare challenge that could define his legacy, and the timetable for US troops in Afghanistan remains murky, it is all too easy to become cynical about the public sphere," MSNBC.com writers Johnny Simon and Farra Kober confessed in a piece published this morning. "But when members of the msnbc family paused to reflect, what they recalled was a year full of triumph and spirit," they noted in the lead paragraph of their November 26 "Why I'm thankful" slideshow feature.
By Jeffrey Meyer | November 21, 2013 | 11:10 AM EST
Following two split rulings on abortion this week, one at the ballot box and one by the Supreme Court, the folks at MSNBC have engaged in an all-out assault pushing their pro-abortion agenda across their network. On Wednesday November 20 things weren’t much different as NewsNation host Tamron Hall brought on MSNBC darling and “women’s health advocate” Sandra Fluke for a one-sided discussion on abortion in America.
The segment began with host Hall framing the issue as “the Supreme Court ruled it would not intervene to stop Texas’ restrictive abortion law while voters in Albuquerque rejected an abortion ban.”
By Kyle Drennen | October 15, 2013 | 2:39 PM EDT
Touting the results of an NBC News/Esquire magazine survey on Tuesday's NBC Today of the supposed political center in America, fill-in co-host Tamron Hall proclaimed: "Interesting note, we asked the middle who they trust, guys, the most. And the answer is President Obama, Oprah Winfrey. The most trusted people according to those who fall in the middle." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
In response to the finding, co-host Matt Lauer turned to his fellow co-hosts and remarked: "Sorry about that, guys." Savannah Guthrie replied: "Oh, what, you thought we were in the running?" That prompted laughter from the group of journalists. Weatherman Al Roker added: "Yeah, I didn't think that was coming up." He then joked that Obama could run for a third term with Oprah as his running mate: "There's the ticket for 2016."