On Monday night, the panelists on the Fox News Channel (FNC) show Special Report excoriated the Obama administration for saying in a statement that the Coptic Christian men from Egyptian beheaded by ISIS in a video along the Libyan coast were “Egyptian citizens” and labeling Islamic State fights as merely “ISIL-affiliated terrorists” instead of further identifying them as Muslims or Islamic extremists.
Special Report
When it came to the major broadcast networks covering the full congressional passage of the Keystone XL oil pipeline on their Wednesday night newscasts, ABC’s World News Tonight with David Muir and the CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley chose to ignore the story completely and left their viewers in the dark on this issue. Meanwhile, NBC Nightly News made it the second topic covered on its broadcast and while it was the first network evening news mention of Keystone since all three did on January 6
In an interview with left-wing website Vox.com released on Monday, President Obama downplayed the threat from radical Islamic terrorism and blamed the media for supposedly hyping the danger: "If it bleeds, it leads, right? You show crime stories and you show fires, because that's what folks watch, and it's all about ratings. And, you know, the problems of terrorism and dysfunction and chaos, along with plane crashes and a few other things, that's the equivalent when it comes to covering international affairs."

Two videos tonight: First, Weather Channel “reporters had very little trouble filling 24 hours of storm coverage,” FNC’s Bret Baier explained Wednesday night in a setting up a compilation video produced by ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live, but “how valuable that reporting is, you decide.” Second, on Monday, Senator Rand Paul told CNBC anchor Kelly Evans to “shush.” On Wednesday night, CBS’s Late Show with David Letterman showed shushing a “celebrity” very deserving of such an admonition.
Speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, President Barack Obama took the step of comparing terrorist attacks by Islamic extremists to Christianity being the justification for the Crusades, slavery, and Jim Crow laws in America. The “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC all ignored the President’s critique of Christianity during the Thursday evening newscasts with only ABC’s World News Tonight with David Muir even mentioning that the event. Obama’s comments were a focus in the roundtable on FNC’s Special Report with Bret Baier
During a live interview with NBC’s Savannah Guthrie on Sunday, President Obama told her how, at the White House, “[w]e make beer – The first president since George Washington to make some booze in the White House.”
While it may be true that beer was brewed at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the President’s statement about former President George Washington also making beer there was far from accurate. Washington did, in fact, brew his own beer, but not from the White House since he never lived there (as John Adams was the first president to occupy it in 1800).
On Thursday night, the major broadcast networks declined to cover reports that one of the five Taliban detainees swapped for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in May 2014 has been seeking to rejoin the terrorism ranks by contacting Taliban members back in Afghanistan.
The news, which was broken by CNN Thursday afternoon, came following reports on Wednesday from Fox News and NBC News that the Army could be pressing desertion charges against Bergdahl for leaving his post prior to his capture in 2009. Since those stories arose, the Pentagon has denied those allegations.
The U.S. Senate took the step Thursday of approving the Keystone XL oil pipeline in a bipartisan fashion by a margin of 62-to-36, with nine Democrats joining 53 Republicans to pass it for the first time after failing to do so under the previous Congress.
When the major English and Spanish language networks aired their Thursday evening newscasts, however, the news of the bill’s passage was nowhere to be found. Not a single second of coverage on Keystone appeared on English language networks ABC, CBS, and NBC in addition to Spanish-language networks Telemundo and Univision.
During the daily White House press briefing on Wednesday, Deputy Spokesman Eric Schultz had an exchange with ABC News chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl where he declined to label the Taliban as a terrorist organization, instead insisting it's “an armed insurgency.”
In an admission that surely would be covered if it were uttered by a spokesman for a Republican president, the “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC all failed to cover this story during their Wednesday evening newscasts.

During an appearance on Tuesday night’s Special Report with Bret Baier, Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer took the Obama administration to task for claiming that the biggest “error” America can make is to “blame Muslims collectively” for terrorist attacks around the world. Speaking to Baier, Krauthammer called out the White House’s “straw man” argument and insisted that “everyone who is critical of radical Islam prefaces in saying of course it’s a minority of Islam. It’s not a way to attack all Muslims.”
In a reversal of a key proposal from his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama moved on Tuesday to drop the plan to tax 529 college-savings accounts after outcry from members of both parties and a direct appeal on Air Force One from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
When it came to the networks covering this backtracking by the President on this deeply unpopular idea that even ultra liberals like Pelosi and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) opposed, the “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC made no mention of it during their Tuesday evening newscasts.

Noting Secretary of Transportation Jamie Foxx was this year’s “designated survivor” for the State of the Union address, FNC’s Bret Baier ended his Thursday FNC show with how “it was last year’s cabinet pick who really caught the eye of late night TV.” Viewers then saw clips of ABC’s Jimmy Jimmel, from this year, and NBC’s Jimmy Fallon, from last year, zinging Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz.
