The major broadcast networks all ignored on their Monday night newscasts reports that a federal judge ruled earlier in the day that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had lied to Landmark Legal Foundation in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and warned the agency to cease discriminating against other conservatives. In a 25-page opinion, Washington D.C.-based Judge Royce C. Lambreth declared that the EPA’s conduct was “suspicious” and showed “apathy and carelessness” in carrying out the multi-year FOIA request.
Washington Times
By Tim Graham | January 6, 2015 | 9:51 AM EST
One would think tabloidish news shows like Good Morning America would be interested in the hot story of a former acting director of cybersecurity for the Department of Health and Human Services being sentenced to 25 years in jail for child pornography – the kind of vile stuff that includes the rape and murder of children.
But you would be wrong. Timothy deFoggi, 56, formerly of Germantown, Maryland in the DC suburbs, was convicted by a federal jury in Nebraska in August and nobody in the national press really paid much attention. Isn’t this at least as interesting or outrageous as a Louisiana state legislator speaking a white supremacist event? Where are the “To Catch a Predator” folks at Dateline NBC?
By Tim Graham | December 12, 2014 | 10:14 AM EST
Thursday’s Washington Times included a commentary by Fox News analyst and author Monica Crowley on national media bias.
Crowley described getting into a conversation with a “smiling older woman” at Rockefeller Center in New York (NBC News territory) with an anonymous veteran network TV news producer who insisted her network colleagues now asks at the morning meeting “How do we protect Barack Obama today?”
By Tim Graham | November 20, 2014 | 1:52 PM EST
Some of the nation's most influential newspapers sympathetically broke out the euphemisms for Obama as he prepares for unilateral executive action to "shield" some illegal immigrants from the rule of law, which they call "deportation relief." He's "cheered by reform advocates."
By Tom Blumer | November 8, 2014 | 11:11 PM EST
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Aaron R. Hanlon, an infrequent columnnist at Salon, both have an excuse for Democrats' poor performance in this year's midterm elections: pervasive voter suppression.
You see, the left's new working definition of "voter suppression" — a definition which is never a subject of establishment press scrutiny — is apparently the following: "Many of the people who would ordinarily support us didn't register to vote, and many of our supporters who did register didn't bother to cast a ballot. Ergo, their vote was suppressed."
By Tom Blumer | October 12, 2014 | 6:06 PM EDT
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey's told Marth Raddatz on ABC's "This Week" that ISIS fighters got to within 16 miles of Baghdad's airport in Iraq earlier this week. Framing that distance in a way those in the nation's out of touch Beltway political class will understand, that's the driving distance from the U.S. Capitol Building to Tysons Corner Mall in Northern Virginia. The U.S. had to call in Apache helicopters to prevent Iraqi forces from being overrun.
ABC's Benjamin Bell, in preparing his 12:50 p.m. report on the Dempsey interview, saved that startling piece of information for his fourth paragraph and kept it out of his headline. It's almost as if he was hoping that no one will want to watch the report's accompanying video, which is nowhere near as blasé about that news.
PBS Promotes Obama's Claim Country Has Improved ‘By Every Economic Measure’; Lou Dobbs Proves Otherwise
By Curtis Houck | October 2, 2014 | 10:43 PM EDT Following President Obama’s speech on the economy on Thursday, the PBS NewsHour offered a 48-second news brief on the subject, in which co-anchor Gwen Ifill offered no opposing viewpoint to the President’s claim in his speech that “by every measure, the country is better off than when he took office.”
The show then played a soundbite of the President, in which he lamented that “millions of Americans don't yet feel enough of the benefits of a growing economy where it matters most, and that’s in their own lives and these truths aren't incompatible. Our broader economy, in the aggregate, has come a long way, but the gains of recovery are not yet broadly shared.”
By Curtis Houck | August 15, 2014 | 9:47 AM EDT
It has been over three weeks since The New York Times published a front-page investigation unmasking the actions of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) shuttering an anti-corruption commission. In reaction, the U.S. Attorney has now begun investigating Cuomo’s administration for possible “witness tampering and obstruction of justice,” according to The New York Post.
Despite these serious allegations, CNN has all but ignored the story. The cable news outlet completely ignored the Cuomo scandal until it aired a single tease and report on August 7 during The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.
By Scott Whitlock | July 26, 2014 | 10:35 AM EDT
Although the network newscasts aggressively promoted gun control in the wake of the Newtown shooting, ABC, NBC and CBS have ignored a new report by the Washington Times showing prosecutions for gun violence have plummeted under Barack Obama. Times writer Kelly Riddell on Thursday explained, "While President Obama decries gun violence and presses for more laws to restrict ownership, his Justice Department has prosecuted 25 percent fewer cases..."
She added, "Federal prosecutors brought a total of 5,082 gun violation cases in 2013 recommended by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, compared with 6,791 during the last year of George W. Bush’s presidency in 2008."
By Matthew Balan | July 24, 2014 | 12:25 PM EDT
On Tuesday's NBC Nightly News, Brian Williams reported the Apollo 11 astronauts' meeting with President Obama to mark the 45th anniversary of the first moon landing, but failed to mention that only photo journalists were permitted to cover the event. Williams spotlighted Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins's visit to the White House, and how "with them in spirit in the Oval Office today was the late, great Neil Armstrong."
During his minute-long news brief, the anchor also pointed out a former NASA administrator's warning about the current state of the U.S. manned spaceflight program: [MP3 audio available here; video below the jump]
By Curtis Houck | July 15, 2014 | 12:40 PM EDT
On Tuesday morning, NBC’s Today refused to cover the latest news in the Veterans Affairs scandal as the House Veterans Affairs Committee heard testimony Monday night from additional whistle-blowers who faced punishment from superiors for identifying allegedly manipulated response times for veterans who filed benefit and disability claims.
Coverage of the latest news saw only two minutes and 26 seconds of air time total with only 23 seconds of that from ABC’s Good Morning America. Meanwhile, CBS This Morning spent two minutes and three seconds on the story during the 7:00 a.m. hour. [MP3 audio here; Video below]
By Kristine Marsh | July 10, 2014 | 3:36 PM EDT
It doesn’t take much to make “news” in The Washington Post these days.
Upset at the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby ruling, last Thursday 29-year-old feminist New Yorker Jasmine Shea decided it would be a great idea to leave condoms randomly around a Latham, New York, Hobby Lobby store and spell out the phrase “Pro-Choice” with block letters in various places. Of course she took lots of selfies posing next to her artwork to post to Instagram and Twitter. For that she made a national story in The Washington Post July 9.
It’s a mystery how Shea, who has a mere 286 followers on Instagram, and about 800 on Twitter, which is small beans compared to the typical popular user, somehow managed to get her “activism” noticed by a leading national newspaper. Shea herself even tweeted, “I’m still in disbelief I’m newsworthy.” (Hint for Shea: your ideological conferes at The Post really, really want to see a popular feminist backlash to Hobby Lobby, and they’re not above manufacturing one.)