MRC Study

Profile In Bias: CNN’s New Morning Host Possesses Liberal Legacy at the Network
By Matt Hadro | January 3, 2012 | 9:30 AM EST

CNN’s Soledad O’Brien returned to the anchor desk Monday morning as the network reworked its morning anchor line-up for the second year in a row. In 2007, O'Brien was removed as the co-host of CNN’s ratings-challenged American Morning in an effort to jump-start the flagging program. Now she returns to host Starting Point, the second half of CNN’s morning coverage that airs from 7-9 a.m EST.

During her stint as American Morning co-host and as a CNN correspondent, O'Brien repeatedly exhibited a liberal bias -- particularly through her coverage of gay rights issues, her flattering treatment of President Obama, and her promotion of Democratic talking points in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Some of her most outrageous moments on-air are documented below.

New CMI Special Report: Baptism by Fire
By Matt Philbin | December 5, 2011 | 10:19 AM EST

With the 2012 elections less than a year away, the liberal media are attacking President Obama's potential opponents on a number of fronts, but especially on religion. ABC, CBS and NBC have used religion in two ways, either painting the field of GOP primary challengers as a God Squad of religious zealots or playing up differences in their faith. Whether they're letting viewers know that "Rick Perry's gonna have to answer some questions about the people" he prays with, fretting that God "told Michele Bachmann," to enter politics, or devoting no less than 40 segments to the question of whether Mormonism is "a cult" or if "Mitt Romney is a Christian," the networks have repeatedly used faith against the GOP field.

Media preoccupation with the GOP candidates' faith is the exact opposite of how they covered (or didn't) candidate Obama's 20-year attendance at the church of a racist, anti-American pastor who subscribed to "black liberation theology," or Obama's half-Muslim heritage. The MRC's Culture and Media Institute studied network news reporting on the GOP candidates and religion from Jan. 1-Oct. 31, 2011, and compared it to coverage of the Democratic presidential primary candidates over the same period in 2007. The discrepancy, in both the amount and tone of the coverage, was striking. Network reporters, so disinterested in the beliefs of Obama and his rivals for the 2008 nomination, took every opportunity to inject religion into their coverage of the GOP field. (CMI's key findings after the jump)

No Obama Softballs: MRC Study Finds Morning TV Hits GOP Candidates With Hostile Liberal Agenda
By Rich Noyes | September 22, 2011 | 9:43 AM EDT

For most Americans, the 2012 presidential campaign will be experienced on television, and voters will evaluate the candidates based on their performances at televised debates, daily news coverage, and in long-form interviews. Even with all of the changes in the media landscape over past several years, the most-watched regular forums for candidate interviews are the broadcast network morning news programs — NBC’s Today, ABC’s Good Morning America, and CBS’s The Early Show, with a combined weekday audience of more than 13 million as of the second quarter of 2011.

'Fox & Friends' Highlights MRC Labeling Study
By Alex Fitzsimmons | August 20, 2011 | 9:42 AM EDT

On the August 19 "Fox & Friends" panel segment, co-host Gretchen Carlson highlighted the Media Research Center's (MRC) "revealing" labeling study comparing broadcast network coverage of the 2007 Democratic primary to the 2011 Republican primary.

Published by MRC Research Director Rich Noyes on Tuesday, the study reviewed the ABC, CBS, and NBC morning and evening news programs from January 1 through July 31, 2011 and found 62 "conservative" tags for Republican candidates, compared to only three "liberal" labels for Democratic candidates running during the same time period in 2007.

"That's a 20-to-1 margin, if you're doing the math with us this morning," remarked Carlson.

MRC Study: Networks Found Twice as Much Intensity for GOP Foley Scandal in 2006 Than Weinergate In 2011
By Tim Graham | June 23, 2011 | 11:59 AM EDT

As much as liberals might complain the Anthony Weiner scandal was some sort of feeding frenzy, the networks did not attack it, especially the evening news. They seemed to agree with just-departed CBS anchor Katie Couric, who asked on Twitter: “I’m curious if anybody thinks this Anthony Weiner Twitter scandal is a legit news story or just fodder for late-night comedians.”

That’s not the way the networks acted in the fall of 2006, when the MRC demonstrated a real feeding frenzy in the case of Republican Rep. Mark Foley, who quickly resigned after ABC’s Brian Ross reported he’d sent lewd AOL instant messages to former congressional pages. In the first 12 days of that story, the networks “flooded the zone” with 152 stories (55 evening stories and 97 morning stories or segments).

By contrast, Democrat Weiner’s weeks of trying to avoid resignation didn’t draw a similar flood. In the first 12 days of the Weiner scandal (from May 29 through June 9), the networks filed only 56 stories (just 11 in the evening, 45 in the morning).

VIDEO: How the Media Have Worked to Distort, Dismantle and Destroy Ronald Reagan's Legacy
By Kyle Drennen | February 4, 2011 | 4:17 PM EST

As the centennial celebration of President Ronald Reagan's birth approaches, the Media Research Center has released its special report on media bias against the late commander in chief, Rewriting Ronald Reagan: How the Media Have Worked to Distort, Dismantle and Destroy His Legacy. NewsBusters has complied a video montage displaying some of the worst media attacks over the years.  

View video below

 

Rewriting Ronald Reagan: Attacks on Reagan the Man
By Tim Graham | February 1, 2011 | 1:10 PM EST

Over the next few days, we'll be sharing on NewsBusters our compendium of the most memorably awful anti-Reagan bias from our new report Rewriting Ronald Reagan: How the Media Have Worked to Distort, Dismantle and Destroy His Legacy. First, we review the loathing of Reagan the man.

While most Americans appreciated Ronald Reagan’s love of country and common sense conservatism, the media elite scorned him as either a showman fooling his audience, or a dunce who was unfit for high office. As the media told the story, Reagan was an airhead living in a fantasy world, a mesmerizing Music Man fooling the public with a phony bill of goods, a man who was cruel or uncaring to poor people and a puppet for the greedy rich. Reporters often agonized over why the American public liked Reagan and could not see through the White House spell and share the media’s contemptuous view of him.

 

CNN Claims No Favorites, But MRC Data Shows Campaign Coverage Skewed Left [UPDATED with CNN Reaction]
By Rich Noyes | November 12, 2010 | 5:32 PM EST

11/12: UPDATE with CNN reaction below the fold

CNN has launched a new advertising campaign, claiming to be the only cable network without an ideological ax to grind. “If you want to keep them all honest, without playing favorites, the choice is clear: CNN, the worldwide leader in news,” the on-screen message argues.

So, did CNN “play favorites” during the midterm campaign? MRC analysts reviewed all of the guests and commentators on CNN’s primetime weekday programs from October 4 through October 29, the last four full weeks before the November 2 elections. Guests were grouped into three categories: “Democrat/liberal,” “Republican/conservative,” and “Other.” The latter category included all non-political guests, as well as guests who were not associated with a clear political point of view.

Results and chart below the fold:

FNC’s O’Reilly Factor Picks Up MRC Study Documenting Slanted Campaign News
By NB Staff | November 2, 2010 | 10:04 AM EDT

On Monday’s O’Reilly Factor, host Bill O’Reilly and former CBS News correspondent Bernie Goldberg talked about MRC’s study of the broadcast networks’ Campaign 2010 coverage, which has only talked about conservatives and Tea Party Republicans as “extremist” or “fringe,” not liberals or congressional Democrats.

Goldberg argued that the problem is that “too many liberal journalists they don’t think there’s any such thing as an extremist on the left. Barney Frank isn’t an extremist on the left. Dennis Kucinich isn’t extreme. Alan Grayson, the most embarrassing member of Congress, who thinks that Republicans want you to die quickly, isn’t extreme. But, a conservative politician, especially if he or she is a member of the Tea Party is extreme.” (Video after the jump)

MRC Study: 'News' Media Aid Democrats' Tea Party Trashing
By Rich Noyes | October 27, 2010 | 9:45 AM EDT

The Democrats’ strategy to salvage the 2010 campaign was to distract voters from their record over the past two years and paint their opponents as wacky extremists. Win or lose, the Democrats got a lot of help from their friends in the supposedly objective “news” media. MRC analysts reviewed the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts from September 1 through October 25. Key findings:  

■ Only conservative/Tea Party candidates cast as “extreme.” Congressional Democrats and President Obama are facing voters’ wrath because of their extreme agenda over the past two years: government-run health care; massive unsupportable spending; a proposed “cap-and-trade” tax on energy, higher income taxes, etc. But MRC analysts found 35 evening news stories which conveyed the Democratic spin point that conservative and Tea Party candidates are “extreme,” “fringe,” or “out of the mainstream,” vs. ZERO stories conveying the charge that left-wing Democrats are “out of the mainstream.”

Times Watch's New Supreme Court Study Discussed on Fox News
By Clay Waters | October 4, 2010 | 5:34 PM EDT
Times Watch's new study "Supremely Slanted -- How the New York Times Pounds Conservatives and Coddles Liberals When Nominated for the Supreme Court," was discussed by Fox News contributor Liz Trotta on "America's News Headquarters" just before the one o'clock hour on Saturday afternoon.

After some discussion of a Gallup poll showing Americans have little trust in the mainstream media, host Uma Pemmaraju shifted the discussion to the new Supreme Court study from Times Watch. (Watch the video here.)
Fox News Host Uma Pemmaraju: "But there's another poll, out right now that looks at media behavior as well and specifically how the media handles the Supreme Court nominees, how are those related?"

A Profile in Bias: Christiane Amanpour, ABC's New Host of 'This Week'
By Scott Whitlock | July 29, 2010 | 8:34 AM EDT

On August 1, former CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour will become the permanent host of ABC's This Week, replacing Jake Tapper. In preparation, the MRC has compiled the top ten examples of the journalist's over-the-top liberal bias.

Despite asserting in 2009 that "nobody knows my biases," Amanpour has gushed over many left-wing politicians, including Hillary Clinton: "...A lot of the women that I meet from traveling overseas are very impressed by you and admire your dignity." She also justified Barack Obama's Nobel Prize win, lauding, "He's obviously done something very significant" since the U.S. now has a "new relationship with the rest of the world."

Here are some of the highlights of what the MRC has uncovered. For the full top ten list, including video and MP3 audio clips, visit MRC.org's Profile in Bias.