On Wednesday afternoon, the Clinton Foundation group Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) admitted that it had made “minor errors” in its tax returns with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in both 2012 and 2013 and thus added another layer to the Clinton Foundation scandal. When it came to major broadcast networks covering this on Wednesday night, however, ABC’s World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News both ignored the new revelation.
Internal Revenue Service
By Curtis Houck | October 27, 2015 | 9:07 PM EDT
On Tuesday, the “big three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC censored from their evening newscasts any mention of the House of Representative beginning the procedures to impeach IRS Commissioner John Koskinen on the heels of Republican Congressman and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s expected ascension to Speaker of the House.
By Curtis Houck | August 17, 2015 | 11:00 PM EDT
In Monday evening’s edition of network bias by omission, CBS and NBC neglected to stories concerning a data breach of American taxpayers at the scandal-ridden IRS and the Obama administration finally giving approval for a major oil company to begin oil drilling in the Arctic off Alaska’s coast. Surprisingly, ABC’s World News Tonight picked up the pieces and provided their viewers with coverage of a full segment on the IRS breach and a brief on the future of drilling in the Arctic.
By Curtis Houck | June 4, 2015 | 11:01 PM EDT
In Thursday’s edition of stories ignored by the top English and Spanish networks, the six of them declined to report that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has admitted that illegal immigrants could apply for back taxes under President Obama’s amnesty plan as well as a report by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that fracking does not harm drinking water.
By Ken Shepherd | May 28, 2015 | 5:14 PM EDT
Leave it to taxpayer-subsidized NPR to subtly shade its reporting on a federal government data breach in a way that softens the blow for the Internal Revenue Service.
By NB Staff | February 25, 2015 | 6:43 PM EST
Appearing on the Fox News Channel’s (FNC) Your World with Neil Cavuto on Wednesday, Media Reserach Center President Brent Bozell reacted to dual news stories surrounding ObamaCare and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as “business as usual” for an “out of control” administration ruling “government by fiat.”
The first story came on February 20 that 800,000 ObamaCare enrollees had received incorrect tax information and then followed by news on Tuesday that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has allowed enrollees to keep extra money on their refunds due to the taxing error.
By Curtis Houck | January 14, 2015 | 6:18 PM EST
On Wednesday, ABC’s Good Morning America had a segment that promoted how, due to budget cuts, the IRS will be forced to “delay those refund checks,” “increase the risk of identity theft,” conduct “46,000 fewer audits,” and maintain an “IRS help line” that “is going to become much less helpful.”
Co-host George Stephanopoulos lamented about “fewer audits means less revenue to the Treasury” to run the federal government and then asked ABC News chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl if there was “any chance that this can get fixed this year or is it a lost cause for this year.”
Big Three Newscasts Ignore Trio of IRS Scandal Developments, Have Time for Death of Modeling Exec Eileen Ford
By Ken Shepherd | July 10, 2014 | 8:35 PM EDT There were three developments in the IRS-targets-the-Tea Party scandal in the past two days, all individually meriting coverage on their own right but, taken together as a package are most definitely newsworthy. Despite this, neither ABC's World News nor the CBS Evening News nor the NBC Nightly News spared even a second of coverage to them on their July 10 broadcasts.
By contrast, time was made to cover stories like country artist Garth Brooks's return to the industry (ABC), the 100th anniversary of Babe Ruth's start in the big leagues (CBS), and a baby boom in Washington, D.C., nine months after the government shutdown (NBC). Both NBC and ABC briefly mentioned the Emmy Awards nominations and all three broadcasts had time to note the passing of modeling agency executive Eileen Ford.
By NB Staff | July 2, 2014 | 10:53 AM EDT
Media Research Center's Rich Noyes appeared on the Monday, June 30 edition of Fox Business Network's Varney & Co. to discuss the MRC's latest findings about the network news avoiding developments in the IRS scandal. "ABC, CBS, and NBC their evening newscasts did not touch the Lerner email story for seven days," Noted informed guest host Charles Payne. What's more, "it took a congressional hearing where Paul Ryan called the commissioner of the IRS to get them to notice, and then they dropped it the very next morning."
"This is still the media that reach the broadest number of people" with "25 million people a night watch[ing] one of the Big Three newscasts," Noyes noted, arguing that as such "they still have a huge agenda-setting role and when they decide to leave something off the agenda... the public is harmed." [watch video of the full segment follow page break]
Six More IRS Employees Have Missing Emails; Networks Ignore In Favor of OJ Anniversary, Canine Etiquette
By Ken Shepherd | June 17, 2014 | 9:00 PM EDT Six more IRS employees have curiously had their emails go missing, two Republican congressmen investigating the tax-collecting agency for its improper targeting of conservative non-profits informed the press today. This follows on the heel's of the revelation Friday afternoon regarding Lois Lerner's emails to the White House, the Treasury Department, and other persons outside the IRS.
But none of the Big Three network evening newscasts even mentioned the development tonight, even as they had time for stories on the 20th anniversary of the OJ Simpson freeway chase (NBC), a rare postage stamp up for auction (CBS), and how dogs have and enforce a sort of social etiquette when they play with each other (ABC). [MP3 audio here; video montage follows page break]
By Brent Bozell | May 15, 2014 | 2:48 PM EDT
Editor's Note: The following is a statement released by Media Research Center president Brent Bozell earlier this afternoon regarding the latest revelations in the IRS Tea Party targeting scandal, a development which have been utterly ignored by the Big Three broadcast networks. The full press release is published below the page break and available at MRC.org.
What will it take for ABC, CBS, and NBC to cover the IRS targeting scandal, which is no doubt bigger than Watergate? Time after time after time, we’ve seen major developments in this story go completely unreported, or, at best, given a few token seconds. The liberal media are downright allergic to the truth about the IRS scandal.
This administration has lied countless times to the media’s face, and they just continue to sit there and take it. They’re so lovesick with everything Obama that they can’t bring themselves to do their jobs and report the news. It’d be pitiful if it weren’t so dangerous for the country.
By Ryan Ellis | April 16, 2014 | 5:26 PM EDT
There has been the usual tax day-related glut of articles from liberal publications urging a federal takeover of the tax preparation business. As always, the ultra-left wing blog Pro Publica took the lead, followed predictably by outlets such as Slate, Vox, and Tax Analysts, as well as respectable news outlets like Bloomberg View and Yahoo!.
The basic argument is always the same: the IRS has all this information on you anyway, so wouldn't it just be easier and better if they simply prepared your taxes for you? Wouldn't that be better than having to pay some rent-seeking middleman? This flawed line of thinking fools many a reporter this time of year, but it's refuted pretty easily once you scratch beneath the surface. Below are the top seven reasons the IRS should not prepare your taxes for you: