Texas

MSNBC.com Cries Foul Over Republicans Hitting Wendy Davis for Inaccuracies in Her Campaign Bio
By Ken Shepherd | January 20, 2014 | 6:00 PM EST

When a politician -- male or female, liberal or conservative -- writes a memoir*, anything therein is fair game for the news media and his or her opponents, particularly when claims made therein are false or misleading. But to the gang at MSNBC, Republican criticism of the network's anointed golden girl Wendy Davis is beyond the pale.

"Right attacks Wendy Davis," screams the top msnbc.com headline this afternoon. Clicking that teaser headline takes the reader to Zachary Roth's "Right pounces on news that Wendy Davis embellished life story." Roth went on to practically script a melodrama where Davis is the damsel in distress tied to the railroad tracks by those dastardly, vile Texas Republicans (emphasis mine):

NBC's Maria Shriver Offers Fawning Profile of 'Overnight Sensation' Wendy Davis
By Kyle Drennen | January 15, 2014 | 11:25 AM EST

In a glowing profile of Texas state senator and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis that amounted to a campaign commercial on Wednesday's NBC Today, correspondent Maria Shriver proclaimed: "Wendy Davis became a familiar name last year when she stood in her pink tennis shoes for eleven hours to defeat a Texas abortion bill. Even though the bill eventually passed, Davis became a star. And her story, her personal story, resonated across this country." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Following footage of cheering Davis supports, Shriver lobbed this ridiculous softball to the Texas abortion heroine: "Everybody says Wendy Davis is an overnight sensation. Does it irritate you that people call you an overnight sensation?" Davis replied: "I'm not an overnight sensation. I'm a Texan. And I'm a Texas success story. I am the epitome of hard work and optimism."

MSNBC's Williams Rants Ted Cruz 'Biggest Fraud,' Pouts 'He Wasn't Supposed to Be Elected'
By Brad Wilmouth | December 31, 2013 | 12:49 PM EST

Appearing as a panel member on the Monday, December 30, PoliticsNation on MSNBC to help assign the annual "Revvy" awards for the year 2013, MSNBC contributor Jimmy Williams ranted that Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz is "the biggest fraud to have ever walked in the United States Senate," and went on to bizarrely claim that Cruz "wasn't supposed to be elected," even though the Texas Republican not only won the Republican runoff with over 56 percent of the vote, but even the general election by about the same percentage, beating the Democrat by 16 points.

After Sharpton asked for his choice of "biggest loser of the year," Williams began:

Wendy Davis and Ted Cruz Articles Show Dramatic 'Texan of the Year' Tilt of Dallas Newspaper
By Tim Graham | December 29, 2013 | 10:28 PM EST

It’s only natural that both liberal state Sen. Wendy Davis and conservative U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz would be nominees for “Texan of the Year” at the Dallas Morning News. (In the end, they chose the rescuers at the West, Texas fertilizer-plant explosion, which killed 12 first responders.) But the two editorials on Davis (on December 26) and Cruz (on December 27) show how liberal editorialists can struggle with being honest with the facts.

Both went to Harvard Law School – Davis graduating in 1993, Cruz in 1995. Both gained prominence this year with failed legislative maneuvers. Both draw great excitement from their party’s base voters. Let’s see how the Dallas pundits played with the facts:

Sick Joke: Comedians Sarah Silverman, Lizz Winstead Host Telethon for Texas Abortions
By Katie Yoder | November 18, 2013 | 3:58 PM EST

Actresses, comedians, women empowerment, laughter – why it must be an abortion party!

In her latest piece, titled “Hello, Texas? Abortion Rights Calling,” The Daily Beast’s Sally Kohn advertised an telethon to raise money for “abortion services” in Texas, the “land of Wendy Davis and Jane Roe.” The Nov. 18 event boasts big names, including comedians Lizz Winstead and Sarah Silverman as well as NARAL Pro-Choice America. Oh, and hers truly, Sally Kohn.

National Press Ignores Wendy Davis's Claim to Be 'Pro-Life,' 'Amateurish' Campaign, Attempt to Bully Local Media
By Tom Blumer | November 9, 2013 | 10:58 AM EST

Recently declared Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis had a really, really bad opening round of campaign appearances. Naturally, the national press, which swooned over the Fort Worth Democrat's ultimately failed filibuster against a common-sense pro-life law in the Lone Star State's legislature, pretended not to notice.

They had local help. On Wednesday, At The Monitor in McAllen, Texas, in an item mirrored at the Brownsville Herald, "reporter" Ty Johnson opened with six paragraphs of fanboy fawning about Davis's Tuesday campaign appearance in Brownville, and then buried Davis's galling attempt to portray herself as "pro-life" in Paragraph 23. Also, stay tuned until the final segment of this post for how a Davis press aide tried to bully a local paper into retracting a headline.

Despite Smooth Texas Election, MSNBC Insists There's 'Trouble on the Horizon' with Voter ID
By Ken Shepherd | November 7, 2013 | 4:13 PM EST

The first election cycle in the Lone Star State with a photo ID mandate went off without a hitch on Tuesday. In fact, voter turnout was up 66 percent over the last comparable election cycle in 2011, according to the Texas Secretary of State's office.

But that has done nothing to stop MSNBC's fear-mongering as the network's Zachary Roth hacked out a piece ominously warning in the headline, "Texas voting suggests trouble on the horizon." Roth opened his piece with a woman who insists her being required to sign an affidavit when voting on Tuesday was part of some grand conspiracy to suppress the women's vote for Wendy Davis (D-Fort Worth) next year:

Fun with Infanticide! Video Game Has Players Search for Abortion in Texas
By Katie Yoder | August 28, 2013 | 1:40 PM EDT

If Wendy Davis’ 11-hour filibuster to protect late-term abortion in the Lone Star State wasn’t proof enough of the Texas pro-abortion movement’s desperation, a new video game does the trick. 

In “Choice: Texas,” designed by Carly Kocurek and Allyson Whipple and currently in development, players hunt for abortion access in Texas via the “choose-your-own-adventure” technique – and confront obstacles such as geography and healthcare. 

Daily Beast Furthers Wendy Davis Puffery with 13 Highlights from Vogue Profile
By Ken Shepherd | August 15, 2013 | 6:14 PM EDT

Corrected from earlier | Just when you thought the whole Wendy Davis obsession was dying down, Vogue has up and done a puffy profile of the Texas state senator and abortion rights absolutist for its September issue. Now, I know you're tempted to run out to the newsstand and snatch up a copy, but apparently the Daily Beast's Erin Cunningham did America a favor with a blog post today about the "13 Things You Didn't Know About Wendy Davis."

 "From her love of Victoria Beckham to her teenage rebellious phase [here are]13 things we learned from Vogue’s September-issue profile of Wendy Davis," the subheader for Erin Cunningham's August 15 post gushed. Predictably full of pablum and puffery, Cunningham closed her short piece on a absurdly trite note:

Media That Clamored Against Komen Skips Planned Parenthood Paying $4.3 Million in Medicaid Fraud Case
By Tim Graham | August 2, 2013 | 9:29 PM EDT

In the first week of February 2012, the Big Three networks lunged to the defense of Planned Parenthood when the Susan G. Komen Foundation (very temporarily) withdrew its donation to abortion giant (about $680,000 the previous year). Network reporters whacked Komen, promoting “outrage and disappointment engulfing the Internet.”

But Mollie Hemingway of Get Religion pointed out that Planned Parenthood in Texas was recently forced to pay the state of Texas $4.3 million for Medicaid fraud. Where was the “outrage and disappointment” engulfing the media? The networks didn’t notice. Even the local newspaper coverage was terrible.

Pew's 'Stateline' Pushes Alarmist Message on Texas Abortion Law; Reuters, by Contrast, Gives Readers Nuance
By Ken Shepherd | July 25, 2013 | 6:30 PM EDT

"New state restrictions on clinics that provide abortions could leave millions of women -- many of them poor and uninsured -- without easy access to cancer screenings and other basic health care services," worried Jake Grovum of the Pew Charitable Trust's Stateline news agency in his heavily-slanted July 24 piece at USAToday.com headlined "Anti-abortion measures may hit women's health care." Grovum quoted two foes of abortion regulation laws -- making sure to give one of them the last word in his 16 paragraph story. By contrast, he cited just one pro-life proponent of clinic regulation, Alabama State Rep. Mary Sue McClurkin.

But aside from the article's imbalance and the all-too-common meme that women only have abortion clinics to turn to for free or low-cost health care -- patently untrue as we've noted time and again -- Grovum's article was off-base for suggesting that abortion clinics will become an endangered species in states which regulate them. By contrast, as Lisa Maria Garza of Reuters explained in her July 18 story, "Why many abortion clinics in Texas may stay open despite new law," abortion-rights advocates who study changes in abortion laws for a living admit that clinic closures might not be a widespread as feared by the Wendy Davis-types in the pro-choice lobby (emphasis mine):

WSJ Twitter Account: Obama AG Holder Is 'Act[ing] to Protect Voting Rights' with Texas Lawsuit
By Ken Shepherd | July 25, 2013 | 12:44 PM EDT

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced today that the Obama/Holder Justice Department would request a federal court to put a hold on plans by the State of Texas to put into effect new voter ID laws. The Wall Street Journal's Devlin Barrett has a short article on the development, "Holder Targets Texas in New Voting-Rights Push," published shortly after the announcement at 10:05 a.m. Eastern time.

Barrett failed to directly quote any opponents of Holder's move, but did not that "The move is likely to anger conservatives who have long argued that the law has outlived its usefulness and punishes certain states—particularly in the South—based not on their current conduct, but on their past." But when it came to promoting the article on social media, a Journal social media staffer gave Twitter followers a decidedly pro-Holder spin, pitching the story thusly: