MSNBC’s online coverage of Scott Walker’s new 20-week abortion ban is about as biased as they come. The story was featured with a screen-filling headline which boldly stated “WALKER BANS CHOICE.” This blatant attempt to slam Walker was eventually changed to “NO CHOICE,” omitting the Republican hopeful’s name.
MSNBC.com
By Tom Johnson | July 16, 2015 | 6:00 PM EDT
The New York Times reported last weekend that one line of attack American Crossroads and other Republican-leaning groups are likely to use against Hillary Clinton is that she’s far too wealthy to relate to average Americans. Regarding such criticism, Steve Benen says, in effect: Bring it on.
Benen, a producer for MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show and the primary writer for the TRMS blog, argued in a Monday post that the rich-and-out-of-touch charge won’t stick to Hillary the way it did to Mitt Romney because “Romney was extremely wealthy while pushing a policy agenda that would benefit people like him,” whereas Hillary’s economic program would help those nowhere near as well-off as she is.
By Tom Blumer | July 15, 2015 | 1:20 PM EDT
In an extraordinarily and inappropriately indulgent interview with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif yesterday, MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell rolled her eyes as she mentioned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's position that the "deal" between Iran and an alliance led by the U.S. is a "mistake of historic proportions."
Immediately after doing so, she refocused her attention on Zarif, smiled and batted her eyelashes as she finished her question. The video which immediately follows the jump was posted at Digitas Daily (HT PJ Tatler via Ed Driscoll at Instapundit):
By Spencer Raley | June 26, 2015 | 4:15 PM EDT
MSNBC isn’t even trying to keep their “news anchors” unbiased in their reaction to today’s landmark ruling which legalized gay marriage in all 50 states
By Tom Johnson | June 25, 2015 | 5:35 PM EDT
In the lead-up to the King v. Burwell decision, not a few liberals claimed that most Republicans secretly wanted the Supreme Court to uphold certain Obamacare subsidies because quashing them would have caused major political hassles for the GOP. The SCOTUS ruled Thursday morning, and before noon we had examples of the updated conventional wisdom: Republicans are happy with the decision, which will spare them harm in the 2016 elections.
One post in this vein came from Steve Benen, a producer for MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show and the main writer for the TRMS blog. Benen asserted that chief justice John Roberts, who wrote the majority opinion, “did the GOP an enormous favor -- had the court created systemic chaos, and scrapped benefits for millions of red-state families, Republicans would have confronted an incredible mess they were woefully unprepared to clean up. Worse, there’s a big election coming up, and the GOP was poised to be on the hook for hurting a lot of people out of nothing but spite.”
By Brad Wilmouth | June 13, 2015 | 4:15 PM EDT
This past week, liberal outlets like Salon.com and MSNBC.com demonstrated just how opposed they are to balanced reporting that includes diverse points of view as they tried to make their readers believe FNC host Megyn Kelly had taken the side of police officer Eric Casebolt in response to video of him roughly handling a 14-year-old African-American girl in McKinney, Texas.
After The Kelly File began its Monday show with two segments -- the first featuring a local resident as a guest who defended police actions at the pool party and the second segment featuring two guests who both condemned the officer's behavior -- Salon.com's Scott Kaufman harped on a short quote from Kelly in which she brought up the perspective that the girl was partially culpable because she had refused police orders to leave.
By Jeffrey Meyer | June 8, 2015 | 2:10 PM EDT
Given that Ben Carson’s popularity among Republican primary voters has risen since his formal presidential announcement, it seems logical that MSNBC.com would publish a hit piece entitled “From idol to ‘sellout’: How Ben Carson is losing his legacy.”
By Jeffrey Meyer | June 3, 2015 | 3:34 PM EDT
A new poll conducted by Rasmussen Reports found that 76 percent of Americans and even 58 percent of Democrats support voter ID laws across the country. Given that polling has repeatedly shown wide support for photo ID, will the media acknowledge this public support?
Lefty Bloggers: Supreme Court Case Against Obamacare ‘Idiotic,’ ‘Preposterous,’ a ‘Con,’ and an ‘Ideological Farce’
By Tom Johnson | May 27, 2015 | 11:03 AM EDT Tuesday’s New York Times piece on how the problematic phrase “established by the state” got into and stayed in the Affordable Care Act provoked a great many blasts from lefty bloggers at the plaintiffs’ case in King v. Burwell. Two especially heated posts came from MSNBC’s Steve Benen and Esquire’s Charles Pierce.
Benen, a producer for The Rachel Maddow Show and the primary writer for the show’s blog, claimed that almost no one believes there’s any merit to the plaintiffs’ case: “There are effectively two competing factions: those who acknowledge that the litigation is hopelessly insane, and those who know the case is hopelessly insane but pretend otherwise for the sake of appearances...The case [conservatives are] pushing…is based entirely on a lie.” Meanwhile, Pierce charged that the "preposterous" case emerged from a conservative “alternate universe” sustained by “wingnut welfare."
By Tom Blumer | April 24, 2015 | 2:36 PM EDT
Rush Limbaugh posted an interesting pair of questions at his web site yesterday: "How can CNN still be on the air with no audience? How can MSNBC have been on the air with no audience? In the old days, they're gone, kaput. Something else is tried. But they stay. And they double down on what they're doing that's losing audience."
A large part of the answer, as I noted on March 30, is that those two networks apparently have suffered very little financially as they have lost audience. That's because, as is apparently the case with most of the major cable channels, their primary source of revenue comes from "subscriptions," also referred to as "carriage fees" or "license fee revenues." In plain English, cable channels get paid a great deal of money even if nobody watches them, and don't benefit as much as would be expected when their audience grows.
By Ken Shepherd | April 20, 2015 | 3:58 PM EDT
"Why is humor at the expense of Hillary Clinton something of a national pastime now?" laments the subheader to a teaser headline on msnbc.com's front page today, "Why comics have a field day with Hillary."
By Tom Blumer | April 19, 2015 | 2:19 PM EDT
As yours truly noted on April 12, actress Gwyneth Paltrow made a bit of a splash earlier this month when she announced that she would add her name to the list of ignorant politicians, advocates and celebrities taking on the deceptively designed "Food Stamp Challenge."
The idea is to "try to survive" eating for a week on the average benefit a Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipient receives. The objective is to prove that it really can't be done, thereby "proving" that food stamp benefits are too low. Of course, that's what Paltrow claims occurred, with MSNBC.com hyping how she "succeeded by failing." As was the case with an Indiana journalist several months ago, based on the spending figure Paltrow herself disclosed, she was not failing at all. Based on how the program really works, she would have succeeded had she stuck with it.