Sunday Morning

CBS Review of Russell Crowe Film: 'Robin Hood Meets Che Guevara'
By Kyle Drennen | May 12, 2010 | 5:41 PM EDT
On CBS's Sunday Morning, correspondent Mark Phillips described the latest adaptation of the Robin Hood legend by director Ridley Scott and starring Russell Crowe: "And so here is an evil King John, squeezing his subjects for more taxes....And here is Robin. Not as a thief, but as a revolutionary figure trying to limit the King's power. Robin Hood meets Che Guevara." [Audio available here]   

Protesting high taxes and wanting to limit government power is the equivalent of a Communist revolution? Sounds more like the Tea Party movement.

After making that bizarre comparison, Phillips further explained the plot of the new film: "This Robin joins the fight to get the English king to sign the Magna Carta in the year 1215, the document establishing the first rights on which modern democracies are based." Guevara, of course, was the ruthless henchman of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, hardly an advocate for democracy.
CBS 'Sunday Morning' Goes After Catholic Church on Easter Sunday
By Kyle Drennen | April 5, 2010 | 3:06 PM EDT
On CBS's Sunday Morning, host Charles Osgood marked Easter Sunday by proclaiming: "For many Roman Catholics, the joy of this Easter is mixed with sadness over continuing charges of child abuse and of cover-ups within the Church's hierarchy." In a report that followed, correspondent Dean Reynolds declared that the scandal was "like a heavy blow to the soul."  

Reynolds went on to cite the latest accusations of abuse by a Milwaukee priest in the 1960s as mounting evidence: "damming stacks of court exhibits, documenting the abuse of predator priests...Documents, the victims say, leave a long and shameful trail." A clip was played of attorney Jeff Anderson, who was representing one of the victims: "That all trails involving the cover-up and the concealment of sexual abuse by Catholic clerics lead to Rome and the Pope."

Remarking on the "corrosive effect" of the accusations, Reynolds pointed to poll numbers on the Pope: "A new CBS News poll finds only 27% of American Catholics view Pope Benedict XVI favorably now; 55% gave him poor marks for the way he's dealt with the priest abuse scandal." The poll appeared on screen, showing that 36% were undecided, a number Reynolds failed to highlight. He also failed to mention – and the on-screen graphic did not show – the 19% who "haven't heard enough" to have an opinion on the Pope.   
Behar Claims Liberals More Intelligent and Open-Minded Than Conservatives
By Alex Fitzsimmons | March 30, 2010 | 6:44 PM EDT

The latest edition of CBS’s “Sunday Morning” featured a glowing profile of “The View” co-host Joy Behar in which the stand-up comic implied that conservatives are not intelligent and insisted that liberals are more open-minded.

Interviewer Russ Mitchell asked Behar how she developed a liberal worldview, to which Behar responded: “It comes from, uh, being smart.”

Mitchell then pressed Behar on how her conservative co-host on “The View,” Elisabeth Hasselbeck, would respond to that statement.

CBS Celebrates ObamaCare Achieving Long-Held Liberal Goal
By Kyle Drennen | March 23, 2010 | 5:31 PM EDT
Even before ObamaCare passed, on CBS's Sunday Morning reporter Tracy Smith touted the bill as the fulfillment of a century of liberal efforts: "After months of rancor in the streets, and histrionics in the halls of Congress, the vote takes place in just a few hours....if it feels like this long, angry, divisive debate over American health care has gone on practically forever – the fact is, it has."

Throughout the segment, Smith spoke with left-wing Brown University Professor James Morone, who began by lamenting how much of an obstacle the Constitution has been in achieving nationalized health care: "The founding fathers didn't want to make it easy. And they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams." As Smith began to recite the list of presidents who attempted implementing different proposals, Morone later explained: "Why don't we have it? One word: Congress. We've organized Congress in a way to make it very, very difficult."

In concluding the segment, Smith proclaimed: "Earlier this year, the President said, 'We are close to the summit of the mountain.' Whether or not he reaches that goal will be decided in today's vote." Morone took it a few steps further: "If they get it through, Obama's done something that Roosevelt couldn't do, that Kennedy couldn't do, Clinton, Nixon. Obama becomes, in history, a quite major figure, whatever else happens in the rest of his administration, or he becomes a minor figure. All in one day."
Sean Penn Hopes His Critics Die of Rectal Cancer, Lara Logan Laughs
By Noel Sheppard | March 6, 2010 | 3:37 PM EST

I'm not sure which is worse: Sean Penn hoping his critics die screaming of rectal cancer, or CBS News's Lara Logan finding that funny.

As NewsBusters previously reported, CBSNews.com on Friday posted a preview of an interview to be broadcast on "Sunday Morning."

In it, Logan asked Penn, "Does it make you angry when people talk about, you know, 'Sean Penn, the Hollywood star, the movie star, coming in and trying to do something,' and they're kind of cynical about it?"

Penn arrogantly answered, "You know, do I hope that those people die screaming of rectal cancer? Yeah" (video embedded below the fold with transcript):

CBS Promotes Arianna Huffington Bashing 'Dastardly' Banks
By Kyle Drennen | March 1, 2010 | 4:41 PM EST
Arianna Huffington, CBS In a segment on the banking industry on CBS's Sunday Morning, fill-in anchor Anthony Mason cited the movie "It's A Wonderful Life" and wondered: "Who would you say is today's equivalent of the movie's villain, the dastardly Mister Potter?" His answer: "If you ask the Huffington Post's web mistress Arianna Huffington, it's these guys." Footage rolled of big bank CEOs.

Mason touted Huffington's class warfare against the banks: "Are you angry at banks that are supposedly too big to fail....Well, an internet provocateur has some advice....Huffington has launched a campaign that drives the point home with a sledge hammer....The 'Move Your Money' campaign urges customers to move their money out of the big banks and into smaller community oriented ones."

A clip was played of Huffington arguing: "JP Morgan, Citi, Bank of America, Wells Fargo. These banks that received taxpayer money...have not really done their job of helping small businesses at lending." At no point in the segment did Mason refer to Huffington as liberal or point out the government's role in creating the financial crisis.
CBS's David Edelstein Praises 'Victim and Victimizer' Roman Polanski
By Kyle Drennen | February 24, 2010 | 12:07 PM EST
David Edelstein, CBS On CBS's Sunday Morning, movie reviewer David Edelstein heaped praised upon The Ghost Writer, the latest film by director, and indicted child rapist, Roman Polanski: "Whatever you say about this man, a victim and a victimizer, he's an artist to the end. He can conjure up on screen his inner world. However, malignant."     
CBS Cites Left-Wing Advocate of Infanticide to Encourage Charitable Giving
By Kyle Drennen | February 9, 2010 | 12:26 PM EST
Peter Singer, CBS In a story on American charitable giving on CBS’s Sunday Morning, correspondent Mark Strassmann cited liberal Princeton University bio-ethics professor Peter Singer on how much people should give: “[He’s] worked up a giving guide. The more you make, the more he believes you should give....He believes it’s within our power to virtually end world poverty.”

A clip was played of Singer arguing: “Well I think we should be giving something quite substantial....the right thing to do in this situation, where there are millions of children and adults, of course, dying from avoidable poverty related causes is to give something pretty significant. Something that makes a difference to how you live.”

While Strassmann simply introduced Singer as a bio-ethicist, in reality, the professor has a history of promoting radical ideas, such as justifying infanticide. In an excerpt of his 1993 book Practical Ethics, entitled “Taking Life: Humans,” Singer concluded: “Killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Very often it is not wrong at all.” CBS certainly picked an odd person to lecture Americans on caring for those less fortunate.
O'Reilly Chides CBS Commentary Praising 'Certified Intellectual' Obama
By Brad Wilmouth | January 6, 2010 | 3:39 AM EST

On Monday’s The O’Reilly Factor, FNC host Bill O’Reilly seemed to pick up on a NewsBusters posting by the MRC’s Brent Baker which highlighted New Yorker magazine writer Rebecca Mead’s commentary from the January 3 CBS Sunday Morning in which Mead touted President Obama as a "certified intellectual," while accusing President Bush of giving terrorists a "partial victory" by creating "infringements of civil liberties." The FNC host took on Mead during his show’s regular "Reality Check" segment, as he introduced clips of her as evidence that network news organizations "skew left big time," and concluded that her analysis should have been "accompanied by a more conservative point of view."

Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Monday, January 4, The O’Reilly Factor on FNC:

CBS Commentator: 00’s Brought ‘Intellectual’ President, Also ‘Blight’ of Palin & Chinese Drywall
By Brent Baker | January 3, 2010 | 11:54 PM EST
CBS’s Sunday Morning featured a commentary in which New Yorker magazine staff writer Rebecca Mead looked back at the past decade and hailed the “remarkable...election of a certified intellectual as President” before she cited “unforeseen blights of the era,” listing: “Small plates, Sarah Palin, Chinese dry wall, jeggins.” A fine encapsulation how the New York-based media elite’s view the world.

In her opinion piece tied to confusion over what to call the just-completed decade, she also characterized “the cumulative casualties of war and the infringements of civil liberties that took place under President Bush” as “evidence of at least partial victory” for al-Qaeda.

Mead’s CBS commentary delivered a condensed version of a January 4-dated New Yorker article, “What Do You Call It?,” in which she expressed astonishment John Kerry did not beat George W. Bush and fantasized about a Gore presidency. Mead rued how “the decade saw the unimaginable unfolding” of “the depravities of Abu Ghraib, and, even more shocking, their apparent lack of impact on voters in the 2004 Presidential election.” Plus, she imagined in the magazine:
In the alternate decade of fantasy, President Gore, forever slim and with hairline intact, not only reads those intelligence memos in the summer of 2001 but acts upon them; he also ratifies the Kyoto Protocol and invents something even better than the Internet.
CBS: NY Daily News Reporter Hails Obama’s Arlington Visit
By Kyle Drennen | November 16, 2009 | 6:09 PM EST
James Meek, CBS On CBS’s Sunday Morning, New York Daily News Washington correspondent James Meek related President Obama’s visit to the graves of Iraq and Afghanistan war dead at Arlington National Cemetery: “Now, cynics may say this was just an Obama photo-op. But they weren’t there looking him in the eye. I saw a man fully carrying the heavy burden of command on a weighty day.”

In an article Meeks wrote for the Daily News on Thursday, he used harsher terms to denounce any “cynics” critical of Obama’s visit: “If they’d been standing in my boots looking him in the eye, they would have surely choked on their bile. His presence in Section 60 convinced me that he now carries the heavy burden of command.” To use such a personal experience to promote the current administration and attack critics seems rather cynical.   

In the Sunday Morning piece, Meek almost poetically described the President’s appearance at the section of the cemetery reserved for Iraq and Afghanistan war dead: “I was in Section 60 that morning when he made an unscheduled stop before huddling with his war council on sending more GIs into harm’s way. In a bone-chilling drizzle, he and the First Lady walked through the rows of gleaming white headstones. I saw the President embrace grieving widows, mothers, and battle buddies tending to the graves of loved ones. He asked about each one.”
CBS Reporter Laments Economic Downturn After Fall of Berlin Wall
By Kyle Drennen | November 9, 2009 | 6:11 PM EST
Mark Phillips, CBS Reporting for CBS Sunday Morning, correspondent Mark Phillips marked the 20th anniversary of the fall the Berlin Wall by noting the economic difficulty East Germany has faced in the aftermath: “It still isn’t easy for many. East German industry without government subsidy could not compete. The economy shrank by an estimated 50%.”