On Good Morning America, ABC reporter Tom Llamas decided that the term "anchor baby" is now offensive. The journalist yelled at Donald Trump, for a story that appeared Thursday, lecturing the candidate: "That's an offensive term! People find that hurtful."
Laziness or just an incompetent screw-up? On Tuesday, the journalists at Good Morning America replayed the exact same segment (in its entirety) on Donald Trump that ABC used on Monday morning. This, despite the fact that one of the statements within the story became out of date and inaccurate. On both days Tom Llamas insisted of Megyn Kelly: "She hasn't spoken about his latest statements, but now his fellow candidates piling on." That may have been accurate on Monday morning, but it wasn't on Tuesday.
NBC on Sunday and Monday ignored the news that another illegal immigrant with past arrests has been charged for murder. In contrast, CBS and ABC both highlighted Victor Martinez Ramirez allegedly raping and killing Marilyn Pharis, a 64-year-old woman. On CBS This Morning, Christine Johnson explained, "Martinez Ramirez was arrested six times in the last 15 months, but he was never convicted of a felony and had never been deported." On Sunday's CBS Evening News, reporter Chris Martinez explained the anger coming from Santa Maria, California's chief of police.
On Thursday’s network evening programs, ABC’s World News Tonight was the only newscast to make no mention of the 5:00 p.m. EDT debate between the bottom seven Republican presidential contenders ahead of the 9:00 p.m. EDT event featuring the top ten candidates. In addition, the CBS Evening News skipped Carly Fiorina’s attack on fellow candidate Donald Trump for his phone call with Bill Clinton.
Monday's CBS This Morning and NBC's Today both devoted a minimal amount of coverage to the Sunday bombings of two churches in Las Cruces, New Mexico. The two Big Three morning newscasts devoted 58 seconds to news briefs on the explosions at a Baptist church and a Catholic parish. By contrast, the programs set aide 12 minutes and 22 seconds of air time to segments related to the outcry over the slaying of Cecil the Lion in Zimbabwe.
All three morning shows on Tuesday fretted over Mike Huckabee's comments about Iran, dismissing it as a "desperate" move to boost his poll numbers. On Good Morning America, co host (and Clinton donor) George Stephanopoulos complained that "former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee [is] stirring up the latest firestorm." GMA reporter Tom Llamas lectured: "Many saying there are just some things that are off the table and any comparison to the Holocaust is one of them."
On Thursday, ABC’s Good Morning America and CBS This Morning eagerly promoted the Democratic National Committee going after Jeb Bush for comments he made about the need to create a workforce with more full-time employees rather than underemployed workers.
After providing relatively substantial coverage on the July 1 murder of a San Francisco woman allegedly at the hands of an illegal immigrant, CBS and NBC chose to provide their viewers on Tuesday night with other stories and ignored the latest developments and continued questions regarding the disturbing murder. While they failed to refer to the alleged murderer an illegal immigrant, ABC’s World News Tonight continued to stay on this story with a full report from correspondent Tom Llamas.
The “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC largely greeted Jeb Bush’s entry into the 2016 Republican presidential field on Monday night with full reports that highlighted his announcement speech and jabs he leveled at Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and his fellow GOP candidates. Across the three network evening newscasts, Bush was described as “fiery,” “a doer” who wants “19 million new jobs” and “[came] out swinging against” his 2016 opponents.
In the first network newscasts since Hillary Clinton officially announced her presidential campaign, on Sunday night ABC and NBC cheered Clinton’s announcement and gushed over her campaign video as well as the traffic it received on Twitter. In addition, the networks refused to label her a liberal. “The campaign kicked off with this video sent out on social media. Twitter lighting up the announcement. Check this out. Retweeted 3 million times the first hour, trending number one across the globe.”
After making no mention on Wednesday evening or Thursday morning, NBC continued its streak on Thursday's NBC Nightly News of ignoring the militant atheism and liberalism of the North Carolina man accused of killing three Muslim-Americans. While none of the three networks have alluded to Craig Stepehn Hicks’s liberal beliefs, what differed from each of the past two network news cycles was that CBS dropped any mention of Hicks’s atheism after correspondent Vicente Arenas had included it in reports on Wednesday’s CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley and Thursday’s CBS This Morning.
The only coverage of the ongoing border crisis featured on Thursday's NBC Today was report focused on ridiculing a Republican state lawmaker in Arizona for mistaking a bus filled with YMCA campers for one carrying illegal immigrant children. Co-host Matt Lauer teased: "...why one lawmaker is saying he's sorry this morning." Fill-in news reader Tamron Hall hyped the gaffe: "Yeah, this is a big one." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
In the report that followed, correspondent Tom Llamas declared: "Oracle, Arizona, is the latest town torn in two as protesters await the possible arrival of buses carrying migrant children....At the scene Tuesday, state lawmaker Adam Kwasman, a Republican running for Congress....It turns out that bus was actually filled with YMCA kids heading to day camp..."