Liberal news anchor Thomas Roberts is known for using advocacy journalism to promote liberal policies on his daily MSNBC show. For example, Roberts, who himself is openly gay, will run pro-gay marriage puff pieces on a regular basis.
On May 8 however, Roberts’ liberal puffery reached new heights as he introduced a new segment entitled "The Agenda" which features only "reporters who cover progressive issues."
We here at NewsBusters are often extremely critical of MSNBC’s Morning Joe as it often sets the agenda for the daily bias on the cable network. There are a few times, such as the Gosnell infanticide trial, when Morning Joe will actually prompt the rest of the liberal network to begin covering a story that it had previously ignored. Unfortunately that's not the case with Dick Harpootlian's racist attack on Gov. Nikki Haley (R-S.C.) at a fundraising dinner with Vice President Joe Biden in attendance.
You may recall that we noted that on May 6, Morning Joe ran a brief segment on the outgoing chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, Dick Harpootlian grousing that the Palmetto State's governor, who, like fellow conservative Southern governor Bobby Jindal is of Indian ethnic heritage, should be sent, “back wherever the hell she came from and this country can move forward.”
The folks at MSNBC are still getting thrills down their leg at the thought of a out-of-the-closet gay man playing in the NBA.
Today, openly gay news anchor and MSNBC Live host Thomas Roberts -- who on a regular basis runs gay marriage advocacy segments on his program -- treated viewers to a puff piece in which he compared Washington Wizards center Jason Collins to the African-American athlete who broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball in 1947. [See video after jump. MP3 audio here.]
The ongoing trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell has ignited the already contentious abortion debate across this country. Dr. Gosnell is on trial for the murder of four babies and one woman at his abortion clinic, which people have called a “House of Horrors.”
Given the horrific nature of the crimes Gosnell is accused of committing, one would think MSNBC would discuss this horrific trial in any future discussion on abortion. Unfortunately, if you are Thomas Roberts, such a concept is foreign to you.
Following a speech by President Obama at the annual Planned Parenthood gala on April 26, Roberts decided to bring on three pro-abortion guests to trash Republicans, yet did not ask any of the guests about the Gosnell trial. [See video after jump. MP3 audio here.]
Leave it to Thomas Roberts to not let a tragedy go to waste. Appearing on his daily MSNBC show on April 22, Roberts felt it appropriate to use last Monday's deadly terrorist bombing in Boston to push for federal gun control legislation.
Speaking with Patricia Maisch, survivor of the Tucson shooting which critically wounded former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Ariz.), Roberts noted that the brothers Tsarnaev, residents of Massachusetts, did NOT legally own the firearms they used in a shootout with police last Thursday.
The media’s irresponsible speculation regarding the perpetrator of the terrorist attack in Boston seems to continue on MSNBC. Appearing on MSNBC’s Martin Bashir on April 16, fill-in host Thomas Roberts brought on Harvard’s Jessica Stern to make predictions about who might have initiated the terrorist attack on April 15.
Stern began her segment by saying that the kind of bomb used in this attack was published in an al-Qaeda magazine before launching into her speculation that the far-right may be responsible:
Former congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) went on MSNBC this morning to react to yesterday’s bombing at the Boston Marathon. In a shameless moment of advocacy, Frank used the tragedy to make a political statement about revenue and the size of government. Considering that this happened on MSNBC, you might expect the host to condone the congressman’s liberal activism, but anchor Thomas Roberts actually called Frank out for his despicable attempt to politicize this tragedy.
Early in the interview, Frank stressed that none of us know much about who and what were behind this event as of yet. So the former congressman turned to what he does know how to do – attacking his ideological opponents:
Former Democratic congressman Barney Frank shamelessly used the Boston Marathon atrocity to promote his liberal political agenda on CNN and MSNBC on Tuesday morning, yet only MSNBC called him out for "making political hay" of the bombing.
"I would say this is a terrible day for our society, but a day when I hope people understand the centrality of having a government in place with the resources," Frank argued on CNN's Starting Point. "No tax cut would have helped us deal with this or will help us recover. This is very expensive." Yet co-host John Berman didn't admonish him for railing against tax and budget cutters less than 24 hours after the bombing, but instead offered some diplomatic praise of his words.
It appears as though MSNBC’s war on women agenda has found a new target, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). The subject of this controversy comes from the liberal Mother Jones magazine, which obtained audio of a McConnell campaign meeting discussing a potential challenge from Ashley Judd for Senate and preparing a dossier on weaknesses she has as a candidate.
The liberal media, particularly MSNBC, have been busy using the leaked audio as an occasion to bludgeon McConnell, but MSNBC Live host Thomas Roberts took things a step further on his April 10 program by posing a question to his audience obviously devised as a call to the liberal actress to get back into the game and run for Senate in 2014 after all:
Was Senator Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s campaign office bugged or do they have a mole on their team? Lots of finger pointing over those secret strategy tapes making fun of actress Ashley Judd if she were to throw her hat in the ring and run against him. And that leads our question of the day for you. Should Ashley Judd reconsider running now that Mitch McConnell’s opposition playbook has been revealed?
It's amazing how within a single one-hour television program, the same host can provide balanced reporting on one story but provide completely one-sided coverage of another. For once on the issue of gun control, MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts provided a balanced perspective of the issue at hand.
The same unfortunately cannot be said of abortion, as on April 2, Roberts featured Ilyse Hogue, President of NARAL Pro-Choice America for a one-sided discussion on, “another western state cracking down on abortion rights.” Of course, Roberts failed to bring on a pro-life activist on to challenge the abortion lobby activist, who trashed as unconstitutional and dangerous for women's health recent pro-life measures passed by state legislatures in North Dakota and Kansas. [See video after jump. MP3 audio here.]
MSNBC’s gun control push has its limits, apparently, as anchor Thomas Roberts today distinguished himself by actually doing a journalist's job: presenting both sides of a political debate.
On his April 2 MSNBC Live program, Roberts actually played video of Mark Mattioli, whose son was murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary, speaking out in support of the National Rife Association's call for trained armed guards in schools across America. [See video after jump. MP3 audio here.]
The liberal media's push for gun control has long included the tactic of attempting to shame the National Rifle Association (NRA) and other gun rights activists into silence. That tactic was once again deployed by MSNBC's Thomas Roberts this morning in his interview with liberal Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), who is calling on the nation's oldest civil rights organization to cease and desist robocalls to phone numbers in the Newtown, Connecticut, area.
At no point in the softball interview, however, was it mentioned that some Newtown parents like Mark Mattioli and Bill Stevens have testified in opposition to fresh gun control laws nor that there's been a spike in applications for gun permits in Newtown following the mass shooting, perhaps because those facts cut against the notion that the entire Newtown area is anti-NRA as a result of December's tragedy.