With the year winding down and the news cycle slowing (aside from the weather), Wednesday’s CBS This Morning found it proper to reserve 59 seconds for fawning over Hillary Clinton receiving a question on Tuesday from a young boy about equal pay. Spinning it in the on-screen headline as some “pay perspective” from Clinton, fill-in co-host Margaret Brennan started the brief by making clear that the former secretary of state “did not mention Trump by name at a rally in New Hampshire” and instead “argued the economy does better when a Democrat is president.”
CBS This Morning
This week, NewsBusters is presenting the Media Research Center’s “Best Notable Quotables of 2015,” our annual awards for the year’s worst journalism. Today, the “What Difference Does It Make?” Award for denying Hillary’s scandals. Winner: ABC chief anchor and longtime Clinton operative George Stephanopoulos, who treated author Peter Schweizer as a hostile witness during an interview about Schweizer’s book revealing potential conflicts of interest between contributions to the Clinton Foundation and Hillary’s work as Secretary of State.
The morning after Washington Post cartoonist Ann Telnaes published (then unpublished) an illustration depicting Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz’s daughters as toy monkeys, calling them “fair game” since they appeared in a campaign ad, ABC’s Good Morning America ignored the story completely while CBS This Morning and NBC’s Today excused it as merely a “feud” and part of “increased scrutiny” for Cruz as he ascends in the polls.

Appearing as a guest on Tuesday's CBS This Morning, Yahoo News political columnist Matt Bai brought up 1960s era segregationist Alabama Democratic governor and former presidential candidate George Wallace during a discussion of Donald Trump's popularity: "There is a very dissatisfied conservative piece of the electorate, you know. It goes back really as far as George Wallace."
In a focus group with American Muslims on CBS This Morning, participants told political strategist Frank Luntz that Republicans discussing terrorism was so offensive that their children could not be exposed to GOP debates. One woman warned: “I actually did a call out to Muslim parents across the country to not watch the Republican debate in front of their children because I knew that, that – subjecting our children to hear the hateful stereotyping and the lumping of Muslims with terrorism in front of our children is actually something that psychologically impacts them.”
All three network morning shows on Thursday covered the breaking news that Defense Secretary Ash Carter used private e-mails for government work. But only ABC deemed it an “embarrassment” for Barack Obama himself. Good Morning America’s Mary Bruce asserted, “This is no question this is an embarrassment for the White House and will likely draw attacks from Republicans who say the administration isn't doing enough to safeguard sensitive information.”

ABC's morning and evening newscasts, along with those of competitors CBS and NBC, have yet to cover on the latest Washington Post/ABC poll finding that 53 percent of Americans oppose a new assault weapons ban. This is the "first time in more than 20 years of ABC News/Washington Post polls, with the public expressing vast doubt that the authorities can prevent 'lone wolf' terrorist attacks and a substantial sense that armed citizens can help."
Interviewing Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus on Wednesday, the hosts of both NBC’s Today and CBS This Morning pushed the idea that the 2016 Republican field was so divided that there would have to be a brokered convention to pick the party’s nominee. In 2008, instead of discussing a possible brokered convention, all three morning shows excitedly promoted the idea of unifying Democrats around an Obama-Clinton “dream ticket.”
On Tuesday, NBC left it to CBS to report its own poll showing a significant drop in President Obama’s overall approval rating and specifically regarding his handling of terrorism. CBS This Morning co-host Gayle King covered the numbers from the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll: “43% approve of Americans approve of the job that he's doing, and that’s the lowest number in more than a year. But 60% disapprove of the way that he’s handling the current situation with ISIS.”
On Monday’s CBS This Morning, while covering Ted Cruz’s rise in the polls, correspondent Nancy Cordes noted the Republican presidential candidate’s “outspoken opposition to ObamaCare and his willingness to take on both sides of the Washington establishment resonates with Iowa conservatives,” but warned: “That approach has made Cruz deeply unpopular with leaders in his own party, who worry that he could be just as polarizing of a nominee as Trump.”
In the latest edition of its Note to Self series, Monday’s CBS This Morning featured left-wing actress Jane Fonda reciting a letter to herself in which she praised her own activism against the Vietnam war: “Your biggest strength will be that you won't shutdown and become cynical. You'll become an activist.”

On Friday, ABC and CBS's evening newscasts touted how Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau "personally welcoming Syrian refugees" as they flew into Toronto. ABC's David Muir heralded, "Trudeau greeting fathers, mothers, and children — telling them — quote, 'You're home.'" CBS's Scott Pelley spotlighted the "noteworthy landing — 163 refugees escaping the war in Syria were welcomed to Canada by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau."
