Al Sharpton isn't the only MSNBC host who has a problem with paying taxes. Michael Hewlett of North Carolina's Winston-Salem Journal reported on Wednesday that Melissa Harris-Perry and her husband owe "about $70,000 in delinquent taxes, according to a notice filed in Forsyth County Hall of Justice earlier this month." The IRS placed a tax lien on the couple as a result.
Media Scandals
Salon Writer: Conservatives Who Routinely ‘Peddle False Narratives’ Shouldn’t Gloat Over Rolling Stone 'Debacle'
By Tom Johnson | April 8, 2015 | 3:08 PM EDT When it comes to false media narratives, the typical right-winger should be more concerned with the plank in his own eye than with the speck in the eye of a liberal. That, minus the allusion to the Sermon on the Mount, was the essential argument from Heather Digby Parton in a Wednesday column.
Parton sees Rolling Stone’s debunked, retracted University of Virginia rape story as one component of the right’s “new meme about liberal lies and false narratives.” This meme, she suggested, is wildly overblown (for example, even though “hands up, don’t shoot” was discredited, “young black males being unfairly targeted by police” still is a major problem) as well as hypocritical (e.g., Fox News has “peddle[d] false narratives” about matters such as the Benghazi attack and made a ton of money doing so).
By Tom Blumer | April 5, 2015 | 11:19 PM EDT
Earlier this evening, the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism issued its report on Rolling Stone Magazine's November "A Rape on Campus" story. The report follows up on the magazine's request of Columbia to conduct an independent review of how the disastrously false 9,000-word story made it through to publication.
USA Today is reporting that for all the harsh criticism the piece's author and the others at the magazine received, and despite the fact that RS has now formally and fully retracted the story, no one is losing their job or suffering any other visible consequences. In fact, the magazine considers the whole affair "an isolated and unusual episode" (bolds are mine):
By Kyle Drennen | March 16, 2015 | 5:58 PM EDT
Talking to former CBS political analyst Jeff Greenfield at an event for 92Y in New York, NBC's Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd praised his network's handling of the Brian Williams scandal: "Look, I am proud of my news organization, that it proved that nobody's bigger, nobody is above integrity and credibility. Period." That declaration was prompted by Greenfield taking a shot at how Fox News handled similar allegations against host Bill O'Reilly.
By Tom Blumer | February 26, 2015 | 2:18 PM EST
While it's performing a long overdue housecleaning, MSNBC should point its broom in Melissa Harris-Perry's direction and sweep her off the network for her anti-democratic, violence-advocating rant earlier this week at Cornell University.
Among other things, Harris-Perry told her audience that George Zimmerman deserved whatever injuries he received at the hands of Trayvon Martin in the violent February 2012 confrontation which began with Martin pommeling Zimmerman and ended in Martin's death.
By Matthew Balan | February 23, 2015 | 4:14 PM EST
On Monday, Eriq Gardner of The Hollywood Reporter spotlighted how the National Association of African-American Owned Media filed a lawsuit against Comcast and Time Warner Cable which seeks "at least $20 billion in damages from the way the two giants allegedly discriminate against black-owned media." The lawsuit also alleges that Comcast "made large cash 'donations'" to Al Sharpton and his National Action Network in order to "divert attention away from discrimination."
By Matthew Balan | February 20, 2015 | 3:48 PM EST
On Thursday's CNN Tonight, former CNN correspondent Frank Sesno brushed aside David Corn's supposed expose of Bill O'Reilly's claims about his reporting of the Falkland War: "It's not a Brian Williams problem. I don't think it's anywhere near on that scale." Sesno later added, "I just don't think that this is on a par...[with] the issues, the exaggerations, and the trouble that Brian Williams is in."
By Kyle Drennen | February 16, 2015 | 4:01 PM EST
On Sunday's MediaBuzz on Fox News, Time columnist Joe Klein rushed to the defense of embattled NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams: "I think that we're living in an era where the ferocity of the prosecution is much greater than the severity of most of these crimes. And that's true not only for people like Brian Williams, but also for most of the journal – the politicians we cover."
By Kyle Drennen | February 15, 2015 | 10:57 PM EST
Appearing on the Saturday Night Live 40th anniversary special Sunday night, comedian Martin Short mocked NBC for the ongoing scandal surrounding Nightly News anchor Brian Williams, declaring to the audience of A-list celebrities: “Do you realize that if this roof were to collapse right now, it would be the least of NBC’s problems?”
By Matthew Balan | February 13, 2015 | 5:06 PM EST
Frank Pallotta of CNN Money hyped in a Friday article that "in just one week, the media world has lost, in one way or another, four of its titans" – suspended NBC News anchor Brian Williams, liberal Comedy Central host Jon Stewart, CBS correspondent Bob Simon, and David Carr of the New York Times. Pallotta played up that "if the impact of losing Williams wasn't enough, in the same hour on Tuesday one of media's best and most popular critics, Jon Stewart, announced he was signing off 'The Daily Show.'"
By Matthew Balan | February 13, 2015 | 1:52 PM EST
Thursday's Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN spotlighted another set of questionable accounts by Brian Williams regarding a supposed relationship with Navy SEAL Team Six. Williams claimed that he traveled with the unit into Iraq just three days after the 2003 invasion; that SEAL "friends" of his sent him a piece of the wreckage from the helicopter that crashed on the 2011 raid that killed bin Laden; and that a SEAL once sent him his knife. Two guests cast cold water on Williams's claims.
By Kyle Drennen | February 12, 2015 | 1:33 PM EST
Adding to the myriad of problems for Brian Williams, actor Charlie Sheen has voiced his support for the embattled NBC Nightly News anchor. In an open letter released on Wednesday, the famously erratic celebrity praised Williams [grammar as written]: "First off, THANK YOU, for 24 years of inimitable professionalism and top shelf brilliance, as a stone cold passion driven and (PERFECTLY) fact based journalist....Now and forever you are a true Patriot and a Hero of mine until the day i leave this star crossed imperfect Rock we call Earth…"