We began detailing the Media Research Center’s “Best Notable Quotables of 2015” yesterday with the awards for the gooiest Obamagasms of the year. Today, we have the perennial “Damn Those Conservatives Award,” our annual look at the nasty rhetoric that liberal journalists fling at conservatives. (Thanks to our 39 judges who patiently reviewed dozens of quotes to select the very worst of the worst.)
MSNBC
By Mark Finkelstein | December 22, 2015 | 8:19 AM EST
In the past, Joe Scarborough hasn't exactly hidden his disdain for Marco Rubio, saying he reminds him of an eager student government candidate and questioning his integrity. But things have now escalated to open warfare between the two.
Scarborough, responding to an ad in which Rubio speaks of feeling "out of place in our own country," tweeted an attack accusing Rubio of playing a "crass, offensive, nativist" [read xenophobic/borderline racist] card. Rubio has fired back, putting out a fundraising message in which he slams Scarborough as an "elitist."
By Curtis Houck | December 22, 2015 | 7:50 AM EST
Seeking to join in on the Star Wars: The Force Awakens hype, MSNBC’s Hardball kicked off Monday’s show with a spoof of the famous franchise’s opening credits that told of a “period of civil war within the Republican party” and “President Obama, Hillary Clinton, & the Republican establishment appear to have formed a coalition rejecting [Donald] Trump’s appeal to the DARK SIDE.”
By Mark Finkelstein | December 21, 2015 | 9:15 PM EST
Spine of Steele! Where has this feisty Michael Steele been? In this NewsBuster's view, the former RNC chairman has too often been the voice of the mushy Republican middle.
But on MSNBC's All In this evening, Steele forcefully advanced the GOP cause. For starters, Steele shocked guest host Alex Wagner when he said Donald Trump would beat Hillary Clinton in a debate. Steele then took on Howard Dean, mocking the former DNC chairman when he claimed Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz "know nothing" about foreign policy. For good measure, Michael accused Dean of "shilling for Hillary." Say it, Steele!
By Tom Johnson | December 21, 2015 | 8:48 PM EST
Though Steve Benen, who's also the primary blogger for the MSNBC program's website, is a true-blue liberal, he thinks highly of the foreign-policy chops of some recent Republicans. In a Thursday post, Benen wrote that GOPers such as Richard Lugar and Brent Scowcroft were “learned” and “approached international affairs with [a] degree of maturity.”
That was then; this is now. Benen touched on, among other things, Ted Cruz’s pledge to “carpet bomb” ISIS and Marco Rubio’s remark that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was “not a mistake” to build a case that today’s Republican party “approaches foreign policy…with all the maturity of a Saturday-morning cartoon…The national GOP candidates are speaking to (and for) a party that has no patience for substantive details, historical lessons, nuance, or diplomacy.”
By Kyle Drennen | December 21, 2015 | 4:24 PM EST
Talking to NPR’s Steve Inskeep on MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports, fill-in anchor Luke Russert congratulated the Morning Edition host for teeing up the President to slam Republican critics as racist in a recent interview. A clip played of Inskeep asking the President: “Do you feel over seven years that you’ve come to understand why it is that some ordinary people in America believe or fear that you are trying to change the country in some way that they cannot accept?”
By Julia A. Seymour | December 21, 2015 | 10:09 AM EST
Objective journalism is so old-fashioned. Activism is the new objectivity, at least where the liberal media are concerned.
Rather than reporting as neutral outsiders on matters of race, CNN hosts and guest actually put their hands up in the “Hands up, don’t shoot” pose that never happened while reporting on protests. They seize on mass shootings to repeat calls for stricter gun control.
The sad fact is that many journalists and news publications don’t report on climate change, health care, wages and other economic issues; they promote a liberal agenda with their so-called news. Here are the top 10 ways the media acted as anti-business or anti-capitalism activists in the past year.
By Mark Finkelstein | December 21, 2015 | 9:12 AM EST
It's rare when a politician says something surprising, or doesn't succumb to a feel-good suggestion. Which made Rick Santorum's response to Joe Scarborough this morning doubly remarkable.
On today's Morning Joe, Scarborough had teed Santorum up to agree with his suggestion that we need to "reach out aggressively to let Muslim Americans know that they are every bit a part of the American dream as you or me." But Santorum turned the tables, saying "I would ask that in reverse: what are they going to do to reach out to make sure they are confronting --" Scarborough broke in: "no, no, no. I don't think so." But a composed Santorum went on to calmly make his case, calling out in particular CAIR for "continuing to apologize for the radicals."
By Rich Noyes | December 21, 2015 | 9:11 AM EST
Last week, the Media Research Center announced our “Best Notable Quotables of 2015.” Over the next few days, we’ll present the most outrageous of this year’s Notable Quotables as a way to review the worst media bias of 2015. Today, the winner and top runners-up of our “Obamagasm Award,” for journalists who get thrills and tingles when they think about Barack Obama.
By Curtis Houck | December 19, 2015 | 11:47 PM EST
After airing an hour of coverage following the last Saturday night Democratic presidential debate on November 14, MSNBC skipped out on airing any post-debate analysis after Saturday’s third Democratic debate on ABC and instead played yet another episode of its weekend jail series Lockup.
By Tim Graham | December 19, 2015 | 7:37 AM EST
Joe Flint at The Wall Street Journal reports that among the top 10 cable networks in terms of prime-time viewers, only Fox News Channel, HGTV and Discovery Channel are on track to finish 2015 on an upswing. According to Nielsen, Fox News averaged 1.8 million viewers in prime time through Dec. 15, a 4 percent increase compared with the same period a year ago.
“The GOP debates and the emergence of Donald Trump as a Republican contender were definitely a boost for Fox News and CNN,” Flint reported. CNN is up 40 percent in prime-time, but it’s only 718,000 viewers, far below Fox. MSNBC was down one percent to 580,000, which suggests they’re still pondering the futures of Chris Hayes and Lawrence O’Donnell.
By Brad Wilmouth | December 18, 2015 | 4:55 PM EST
Appearing as a guest before MSNBC's live coverage of President Barack Obama's Friday press conference, during a discussion of Donald Trump's history of promoting birtherism against the President, MSNBC Hardball host Chris Matthews recalled his accusation that Trump is "playing to racists" and playing to a view that President Obama is "not one of us, he's black."