After heavily promoting on Tuesday the Ohio ballot initiative to legalize marijuana before the polls closed, NBC Nightly News offered an about-face of sorts on Wednesday and refused to acknowledge the fact that measure was soundly defeated. Hailing it as “high stakes” in the Buckeye State, anchor Lester Holt hyped in a tease on Tuesday’s newscast: “Legalized pot on the ballot tonight in the biggest swing state of all. Is it a tipping point for the nation? A big money fight with a famous singer caught in the middle.”
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By Curtis Houck | February 4, 2015 | 1:28 AM EST
While discussing answers by former and likely future presidential candidates on whether they have ever used drugs, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell invoked President Barack Obama’s book Dreams From My Father on Tuesday to provide Obama’s answer to the question in what became a gushing tribute that included a nearly three minute reading from the book. O’Donnell proclaimed that the memoir was the “most honest,” “open,” “artful,” and “finest literary work ever authored by a President of the United States” despite the book not containing “the whole truth of Barack Obama's life.”
By Curtis Houck | September 12, 2014 | 3:59 PM EDT
Thursday night’s edition of ABC World News Tonight with David Muir included a report from ABC News correspondent Clayton Sandell on the growing problem in Colorado with law enforcement encountering motorists that are driving while high on marijuana in the time since the state legalized its recreational use after voters approved it in 2012. However, at the end of his report, Sandell pointed out that, in a piece that otherwise spotlighted the dangers of marijuana, “different studies disagree on whether stoned drivers are actually causing more crashes.”
By Kyle Drennen | August 15, 2014 | 10:38 AM EDT
In an interview with the director of a Boston drug rehabilitation center on Thursday's NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer worried about the impact media coverage of legalized marijuana was having on America's youth: "You know, if you're a teenager, a young adult, and you're watching the news and you're hearing more and more stories about the legalization of marijuana...and now you're saying, 'Wait a minute, here.' Are we sending mixed messages on drugs to our kids?" [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
David Ray, co-founder of Number 16, replied: "We are. We are. We're sending mixed messages because what we're saying is, 'Well, this is okay, but this isn't.' And so, what's a kid to do?"
ABC Promotes Legalized Pot in ‘the Land of Starbucks’; CBS Mentions Shortages, Restrictions, and Opposition
By Curtis Houck | July 8, 2014 | 3:15 PM EDT Reporting on the news Tuesday that recreational marijuana is now legal in Washington state, ABC news correspondent Neal Karlinsky filed a story to ABC’s Good Morning America that stands as the latest pro-marijuana story out of many over the last few months across the networks. Reporting from a pot shop in Seattle, he gushed that Tuesday was “bound to be an interesting day.”
Karlinsky provided no opposing viewpoint to sale of marijuana in The Evergreen State or the drug as a whole. Instead, he interviewed a grandmother who showed up at one pot shop a full 24 hours before it goes on sale and a man who came out of retirement to become a marijuana grower. [MP3 audio here; Video below]
By Curtis Houck | July 7, 2014 | 5:15 PM EDT
On Monday, all three broadcast network morning news shows gave mention to the legalization of marijuana for recreational use in Washington state with sales set to begin on Tuesday. In particular, CBS This Morning and NBC’s Today devoted entire segments to the drug and not only were both stories positive, a statement from the former President of Drug Watch International on Today was the only sort of opposing viewpoint provided.
The four-minute-and-eight-second piece by CBS News correspondent Barry Petersen was the latest in what truly has been a network oscillating back and forth between critical stories and puff pieces on pot. Without question, Monday’s report belonged in the latter. After mentioning that sales will begin Tuesday in Washington, Petersen went on to profile the writers of The Cannabis, a website run by The Denver Post that is “about all things pot.” [MP3 audio here; Video below]
By Connor Williams | June 4, 2014 | 11:30 AM EDT
Dan Rather loves telling people about the time he tried heroin...for journalism. Now liberal New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote in a Tuesday column about traveling to Colorado to experience the progressive new world of legalized pot. Suffice it to say, her experience was, well, quite the adventure.
Dowd detailed how she inhaled a pot-filled candy bar, and the resulting psychological effects. Let’s just say her encounter with marijuana was something less than a stoner’s fantasy. She describes, that, after about an hour, she “felt a scary shudder go through my body and brain. I barely made it from the desk to the bed, where I curled up and lay in a hallucinatory state for the next eight hours.”
By Kyle Drennen | March 10, 2014 | 12:53 PM EDT
While NBC eagerly touted Colorado legalizing marijuana at the start of the year, even promoting one Denver store that hoped to become the "Costco of weed," on Monday's Today, correspondent Miguel Almaguer finally noticed a downside to legalized drug use: "More than half of Colorado's 61 arrests made in January for impaired driving involved someone who was high." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
NBC joins ABC and CBS in belatedly covering the negative consequences of legalizing pot after initially promoting the move. CBS This Morning hyped Colorado's "marijuana munchies" before discovering pot contaminated with mildew and e-coli. ABC's World News proclaimed an "historic" "pot revolution" in the state before reporting on the legal marijuana trade becoming a popular target for criminals.
By Jack Coleman | March 4, 2014 | 4:52 PM EST
Radio libtalker Bill Press did much yesterday to explain why he more than occasionally comes across as addled. Then again, it's probably only his politics responsible for conveying that impression.
In what is unlikely to come as a shock to his former boss, Press said there were "potheads" who worked in the state bureaucracy for California Gov. Jerry Brown, and that Press was one of them. Correction -- while working in the higher echelons of bureaucracy. (Audio after the jump)