On Monday's CNN Tonight, Don Lemon refreshingly pointed out a problematic component of the Ferguson protests. Former police officer David Klinger pointed out that "all the forensic evidence indicates that it wasn't [Michael] Brown with his hands up standing still. All the evidence indicates that he was coming back at Officer Wilson." Lemon replied to his guest by wondering, "So the question is, this 'hands up' rallying cry has – is it a false narrative that people are using to fit their own agenda?"
Ferguson Shooting
By Curtis Houck | December 2, 2014 | 12:33 AM EST
During a speech in Baltimore on Saturday, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan justified the violence that took place in Ferguson, Missouri in the aftermath of the grand jury decision and called on African-Americans to “die for something” and “tear this goddamn country up” as peaceful protests only benefit “white folks.” Since Farrakhan’s remarks at Morgan State University became public, the major broadcast networks have all ignored the story completely in both their respective morning and evening newscasts.
By Scott Whitlock | November 26, 2014 | 2:13 PM EST
Fox News anchor Sean Hannity and his guests on Thursday night slammed the New York Times for printing key details about Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson's home address. An angry Hannity attacked, "If anything happens to that man, his family, or that home...the culpability is with them."
By Matthew Balan | November 25, 2014 | 7:00 PM EST
Two CNN anchors channeled the supporters of Michael Brown's family on Tuesday's Early Start, as they played up how St. Louis County, Missouri Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch presented the Brown case to a grand jury, instead of pursuing charges himself. Chris Cuomo pointed out that "the prosecutor could still bring charges even after the grand jury." Deborah Feyerick later forwarded her colleague's point: "Could the prosecutor...basically, overrule the grand jury and say, charges should be filed?"
By Matthew Balan | November 25, 2014 | 3:50 PM EST
Rudy Giuliani fired back at Michael Eric Dyson on CNN's New Day on Tuesday for the MSNBC analyst's "white supremacy" attack on the former New York City mayor. When anchor Alisyn Camerota raised Giuliani's supposedly "controversial comments" from Sunday's Meet the Press on NBC, the former Republican politician underlined that he had "said the same thing the President of the United States said, and I was accused of being a racist."
By Curtis Houck | October 22, 2014 | 10:15 PM EDT
On Wednesday, the results of the St. Louis County autopsy of 18-year-old Michael Brown, who died after being shot by Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson on August 9, were leaked to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper and largely supports Wilson’s claims that he had a physical altercation with Brown inside his police SUV.
When it came to the major broadcast networks offering any mention of this big development, CBS and NBC failed to cover the story on both their morning and evening newscasts, respectively.
CBS’s Duthiers on Missouri State Law on Police Use of Force: ‘Sounds to Me as If the Cops Are Protected No Matter What’
By Curtis Houck | August 26, 2014 | 11:30 PM EDT Reporting on the latest in Ferguson, Missouri for Tuesday night’s CBS Evening News, CBS News correspondent Vladimir Duthiers interviewed a St. Louis detective on what Missouri state law says regarding the ability of law enforcement to use deadly force. After reading from the law directly, Duthiers opined to the detective that it “[s]ounds to me as if the cops are protected no matter what they do.”
To Duthiers’s comment, Detective and St. Louis County Police Association President Gabe Crocker responded that police officers are not “protected by a blanket policy where they can just shoot people and get away with it,” but emphasized that “I do think the law allows for police officers to use deadly force.” [MP3 audio here; Video below]
By Curtis Houck | August 22, 2014 | 1:02 PM EDT
Friday’s CBS This Morning dove into the subject of President Obama vacationing in Martha’s Vineyard while events domestically and internationally rage, including the brutal murder of American journalist James Foley at the hands of the Islamic terrorist group ISIS. While they were the only network to mention this story, the report from CBS News White House Correspondent Major Garrett and discussion among the hosts afterward did little more than cover for the president.
At the segment's conclusion, co-host Norah O’Donnell compared Obama’s golfing minutes after making a statement about Foley’s murder to former President George W. Bush going golfing after speaking about a suicide bombing in Iraq. O’Donnell observed that: [MP3 audio here; See the video after the jump]
O’Reilly Blasts Sharpton on Ferguson, Calls Him a ‘Charlatan’ Who ‘Only Cares About His Own Self-Aggrandizement’
By Curtis Houck | August 20, 2014 | 10:50 PM EDT On Wednesday evening, Bill O’Reilly returned from vacation to anchor his Fox News Channel (FNC) program live to discuss the situation in Ferguson, Missouri since the death of Michael Brown on August 9. In just over an eight-minute-long “Talking Points” segment, O’Reilly addressed multiple aspects of the story, but specifically slammed MSNBC commentator and activist Al Sharpton as “this charlatan” who “has the nerve to insult the American police community” while only caring “about his own self-aggrandizement.”
After airing a clip of Sharpton speaking at a rally in Ferguson on Sunday in which he indirectly called out law enforcement for “smear[ing]” Brown instead of “the principles of justice and dignity,” O’Reilly grew extremely agitated: “Al Sharpton has the nerve to insult the American police community, men and women risking their lives to protect us. This charlatan has the gall to do that and NBC News is paying him. My god! Why is that acceptable?” [MP3 audio here; Video below]
Ezra Klein: ‘The White House No Longer Believes Obama Can Bridge Divides. They Believe…He Widens Them’
By Tom Johnson | August 19, 2014 | 3:48 PM EDT The major left-right disagreement regarding President Obama as a speechmaker hasn’t been over whether he’s talented (most conservatives concede he’s got a flair) but over whether he’s effective. Now, however, Ezra Klein thinks that a certain key group of liberals has lost confidence that Obama speeches in general, and specifically one about the situation in Ferguson, Missouri, would bring about the desired results. This group is known as...the Obama administration.
“If Obama's speeches aren't as dramatic as they used to be,” wrote Klein in a Monday post on Vox, “this is why: the White House believes a presidential speech on a politically charged topic is as likely to make things worse as to make things better. It is as likely to infuriate conservatives as it is to inspire liberals. And in a country riven by political polarization, widening that divide can take hard problems and make them impossible problems.”
By Connor Williams | August 14, 2014 | 3:45 PM EDT
Token quasi-conservative MSNBC host Joe Scarborough was in full-blown contrarian mode this morning as he offered his perspective on two reporters in Ferguson, Missouri, who were briefly arrested and then shortly thereafter released. The former Florida congressman ripped the reporters in question for failing to listen to the cop’s repeated orders to exit a McDonald’s as they attempted to cordon it off.
After playing video of one of the journalists – the Washington Post’s Wesley Lowery – being told by the police that he needed to leave, the Morning Joe host offered: [MP3 audio here; video below]