Seeking to boost President Barack Obama and backers of the Paris climate change summit, the “big three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC devoted on Monday night over 15 minutes of airtime across six segments touting the summit, a Discovery Channel documentary on climate change, a hashtag campaign, and climate scientists in the Arctic Circle -- to name a few examples. CBS anchor Scott Pelley: "President Obama warned that the world is fast approaching the hour when it will be too late to save the planet from climate change."
Mark Phillips
By Kyle Drennen | November 30, 2015 | 2:56 PM EST
Introducing a report on Monday’s CBS This Morning about the climate change conference being held in Paris, co-host Norah O’Donnell worried that “security concerns threaten to overshadow the talks.” Correspondent Margaret Brennan followed: “The world's two biggest polluters, China and the U.S., kicked off the climate change summit....The goal in Paris is to limit global warming to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit from pre-industrial levels, but the terror threat is diverting attention.”
By Jeffrey Meyer | October 5, 2014 | 9:17 AM EDT
Once again, CBS has proved that it is the lone “big three” network that attempts to be a real news network. Friday’s CBS Evening News w/ Scott Pelley actually reported on the rise of anti-Semitism in Germany primarily caused by Muslims immigrating into the country. Anchor Scott Pelley highlighted how “tonight, armed guards have been posted at synagogues throughout Germany for the start of Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement. Mark Phillips reports anti-Semitism is once again on the rise in Europe, especially in Germany.”
By Matthew Balan | September 27, 2013 | 1:26 PM EDT
Thursday's CBS Evening News was practically shocked by a fact that threatens the agenda of radical environmentalists – global temperatures have simply not risen in 15 years. Scott Pelley trumpeted how "on the eve of a major new report on climate change...a surprising discovery." Mark Phillips hyped that "another inconvenient truth has emerged on the way to the apocalypse....the global atmosphere hasn't been warming lately."
The correspondent spotlighted how "since 1998, while the amount of greenhouse gases continued to rise, the air temperature hasn't." He also pointed out that this development "makes the task for the world's majority of climate scientists...more difficult. For the skeptics, it's ammunition." [MP3 audio available here; video below the jump]
By Matthew Balan | September 6, 2013 | 2:58 PM EDT
On Friday's CBS This Morning, Mark Phillips all but hinted that Pope Francis had "taken sides" with Russia's Vladimir Putin and against President Obama in the international debate over military strikes in Syria. Phillips proposed that the Pope's letter to Putin "must have been music to the Russian president's ears."
The journalist also turned to a "Vatican historian" who once publicly attacked Francis' predecessor, Benedict XVI, as a "dictator", and likened him to Islamists. He also labeled the Pope's upcoming prayer and fasting vigil for peace in Syria a "religious street protest." [audio available here; video below the jump]
By Matthew Balan | April 8, 2013 | 1:22 PM EDT
Monday's CBS This Morning played up the domestic critics of Margaret Thatcher as they covered the breaking news of her death. Mark Phillips, reporting from London, spotlighted how Thatcher was once called "Plunder-woman" by a British union leader, and how she was "contentious here, famous for breaking the back of the very strong labor movement in Britain." Phillips also noted how the former prime minister was "a figure both reviled and revered."
During a retrospective on the "Iron Lady", correspondent Elizabeth Palmer ballyhooed how Thatcher's "trademark helmet hair, cut-glass accent, and bullying style became a staple of British satire".
By Matthew Balan | March 14, 2013 | 1:56 PM EDT
CBS wasted little time to play up newly-elected Pope Francis' "conservative" views on issues like abortion, same-sex "marriage", and birth control. On Thursday's CBS This Morning, Norah O'Donnell underlined how the former Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio was "described as a staunch conservative". Mark Phillips also used the "conservative" label, and pointed out how the Pope's doctrinal stand has "not made him popular with relatively progressive Jesuit brothers."
Charlie Rose also pressed New York City Archbishop Timothy Cardinal Dolan during the morning newscast about "doctrinal changes on ordination of women, on celibacy, on divorce." When Dolan emphasized that "doctrine can't change," Rose interjected, "But how do you respond to the fact that this really is the century of women?"
By Matthew Balan | March 13, 2013 | 7:26 PM EDT
During CBS's special coverage of the papal election on Wednesday, correspondent Mark Phillips singled out two dissenters from Catholic tradition in the middle of a crowd of hundreds of thousands in St. Peter's Square in Vatican City, mere minutes after the white smoke went out of the Sistine Chapel's chimney, and before Pope Francis emerged onto the balcony over the piazza.
The two activists, who wore pink "ordain women" pins, not only sought to change the Catholic Church's teachings on the all-male priesthood, but spotlighted "LGBT issues [and] reproductive health care" – a thinly-veiled reference to abortion and contraception – as issues that need to be drastically changed inside the Church. [audio available here; video below the jump]
By Matthew Balan | December 5, 2012 | 12:22 PM EST
CBS correspondent Mark Phillips took journalistic hype to a new low on Wednesday's CBS This Morning when he compared Princess Kate's pregnancy to that of Jesus Christ over 2,000 years ago: "This is day three of what's becoming, perhaps, the most talked about pregnancy since Bethlehem." [audio available here; video below the jump]
Phillips delivered this beyond bizarre throwaway line as he began his report outside the hospital in London where the Duchess of Cambridge is being treated for hyperemesis gravidarum - a severe form of morning sickness. He added, "The news today seems to be better."
By Brad Wilmouth | September 22, 2011 | 8:21 AM EDT
As the morning and evening newscasts on CBS have reported on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's upcoming plan to seek statehood recognition from the United Nations on Friday, correspondent Mark Phillips has appeared three times filing reports which have portrayed Palestinians as victims of Israeli extremism and "militant" Jewish settlers, while ignoring Palestinian extremism and refusal to meet for talks in recent years despite overtures from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
On Tuesday's CBS Evening News, Phillips recounted clashes between Palestinians and Jewish settlers, and seemed to suggest that the Israeli military had fired tear gas at the wrong group as he noted that Arabs were subjected to the anti-riot measure. Phillips:
By Paul Wilson | August 17, 2011 | 4:37 PM EDT
Arson, destruction, thievery, beatings and even murder – they’re the inevitable reaction to increased college tuition fees?
To hear the broadcast news networks spin the violence and looting convulsing English cities in August, the riots were clashes between the “haves and the have-nots” (a term used by NBC reporter Martin Fletcher) in British society. According to the networks, an oppressed minority unleashed pent-up rage against a conservative government hell-bent on cutting government spending and creating economic inequality in the process.
By Kyle Drennen | January 14, 2011 | 3:53 PM EST
On Friday's CBS Early Show, correspondent Mark Phillips declared how the beatification of Pope John Paul II to sainthood was moving "at break-neck speed" and noted that "Groups protesting the Catholic Church's child abuse scandal are urging the Vatican to slow down the process."
Despite the protests, Phillips remarked that "the current pope, Benedict XVI, seems determined to charge ahead with the canonization of his extremely popular predecessor." Earlier in the report, he suggested John Paul II's road to sainthood was a short cut: "It normally takes centuries for major Church figures to reach sainthood and join the saintly statues on the facade of St. Peter's Basilica. But John Paul II has been fast-tracked."