The “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC showed no interest in covering on Wednesday night the optics of President Obama touting global warming as a “serious threat,” in a speech to graduates of the Coast Guard Academy, days after the Iraqi city of Ramadi fell to ISIS. While the networks avoided this story, the Fox News Channel (FNC) program Special Report offered a full segment on the President’s remarks and their timing in relation to the continued rise of ISIS.
President Obama
By Curtis Houck | May 19, 2015 | 12:25 AM EDT
While Monday’s editions of the CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News refused to criticize the Obama administration on ISIS after the fall of Ramadi, the pair did devote time to hyping President Obama’s opening of an official Twitter account (to go along with his campaign account). In the case of the CBS Evening News, the story received both a tease and fawning news brief as anchor Scott Pelley gushed in the tease that “[n]o sitting president has done what this sitting president did today.”
By Curtis Houck | May 18, 2015 | 8:54 PM EDT
CBS and NBC continued their refusal on Monday evening to criticize the Obama administration’s handing of Iraq and so-called policy on ISIS as the Islamic terror group seized control of Ramadi over the weekend. While those two networks continued to spin for the White House, ABC bucked the trend from the network morning newscasts by providing a blunt critique of the Obama administration for “painting far too rosy a picture of how this war is going for far too long.”
By Curtis Houck | May 12, 2015 | 11:20 PM EDT
On Tuesday, ABC’s World News Tonight and the CBS Evening News chose to ignore news that Senate Democrats voted to block debate on a series of trade measures pushed by President Barack Obama as part of a push to eventually approve the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal. NBC Nightly News did cover the story with a news brief by Lester Holt who billed the failed vote as “[a] major setback today for one of President Obama’s top economic priorities” that “was delivered by the President’s own party.”
By Curtis Houck | May 6, 2015 | 2:02 AM EDT
During the opening monologue of Tuesday’s Late Show on CBS, David Letterman channeled his inner Chris Matthews in professing his admiration for President Barack Obama following his appearance on Monday’s program by declaring that “you can feel the electricity in the room” whenever he’s on the program.
By Curtis Houck | April 15, 2015 | 2:51 AM EDT
Hours after President Obama moved to strike Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, Tuesday’s NBC Nightly News cheered the decision by the President as “another historic step” and “another remnant of the Cold War” tumbling down. Interim anchor Lester Holt began with the announcement that “[w]e are witnessing tonight another historic step in thawing relations between the U.S. and Cuba” with “[t]he White House announcing that President Obama will remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.”
By Curtis Houck | April 8, 2015 | 11:46 PM EDT
On Wednesday night, the “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC declined to cover the latest in the legal battle over President Obama’s executive action on illegal immigration as U.S. District Judge denied the Obama administration’s request for an injunction that would have allowed his plan to go forward. Announced late Tuesday night, U.S. District Judge Hanen blasted the request and declared that the President’s decision to not enforce “laws requiring removal of illegal immigrants that conflict with the 2014 DHS directive” to enact amnesty only further cemented his ruling.
By Curtis Houck | April 8, 2015 | 9:00 PM EDT
Wednesday’s edition of the CBS Evening News chose to re-air portions of chief medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook’s interview with President Obama on climate change supposedly threatening public health and included LaPook fretting at the end to anchor Scott Pelley that “climate change legislation has stalled in Congress.” The network’s cheerleading of Obama’s newest environmental initiative began right at the top of the newscast as Pelley teased the segment to viewers: “The President speaks with us about how climate change is making people sick.”
By Curtis Houck | April 6, 2015 | 9:49 PM EDT
During its coverage of the Iran framework on Monday, NBC Nightly News touted the hopes of proponents and the Obama administration that the “details of a deal may be changing” the minds of “some” critics as President Obama and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz began selling the agreement in press conferences, interviews, and calls with world leaders. Lester Holt began by promoting Obama’s recent interview with NPR in which he said forcing Iran to recognize Israel’s existence as part of a final nuclear deal (as Israel has insisted) would be a “fundamental misjudgement.”
By Curtis Houck | April 3, 2015 | 12:39 PM EDT
The favorable coverage of the agreed framework for future talks over Iran’s nuclear program continued on Friday morning as the network newscasts hailed the “legacy defining moment now within reach” for President Obama and compared Iranian “hardliners” to deal skeptics in the U.S. and Israel. Today co-host Savannah Guthrie began the program’s coverage by hailing the “landmark deal” with NBC's Peter Alexander fretting that “Republicans and the Israeli prime minister” are “clearly not on board” as “a legacy-defining moment” appeared “now within reach” for the President.
By Curtis Houck | April 2, 2015 | 11:44 PM EDT
The Washington Post’s editorial board slammed the Obama administration Thursday evening over the framework for additional negotiations with Iran concerning its nuclear program that “fall well short of the goals originally set by the Obama administration” and would allow Iran to “instantly become a threshold nuclear state.” Set to run in the Friday print edition of the newspaper, the editorial also pointed to numerous examples of hypocrisy on the part of the President from previous moments in his presidency when he called for a deal far tougher than the one being discussed.
By Curtis Houck | April 2, 2015 | 2:57 AM EDT
On Wednesday’s CBS Evening News, anchor Scott Pelley devoted a few moments after a news brief on the Iran deal negotiations to explaining the centuries-long divide between the Shia and Sunni branches of Islam and, in the process, also took time to reflect on President Barack Obama’s 2009 speech in Cairo. After noting that the negotiations are taking place “against a backdrop of a disintegrating Middle East,” Pelley fretted that, for Obama, “this isn’t what he had in mind” following the speech where the President had “declared a new beginning for the Arab world.”