Nicholas Fondacaro
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At roughly nine o’clock Eastern Time Fox News Channel’s Ed Henry broke in with breaking news from the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado. At the forum, CIA Director Mike Pompeo took to the stage slammed The New York Times for putting the life of an officer at risk. “We had a publication, you work for Bret, that published the name of an undercover officer at the Central Intelligence Agency. I find that unconscionable,” he angrily declared to the applause of the audience.
In the wake of President Trump’s interview with The New York Times, where he hammered his Attorney General and pressed on the Russia investigation, MSNBC’s Chief Legal Correspondent Ari Melber demonstrated that NBC can’t get its story straight. “And with regard to [Special Counsel] Mueller … just to be clear, neither the new FBI director nor the president has any ability to remove the special counsel,” Melber told colleague Katy Tur during Thursday’s MTP Daily. But just over a month earlier, their colleagues were freaking out about just that.
In a Senate hearing on Capitol Hill Wednesday, the United States Postal Service felt the heat of bipartisan scorn for decades of violations of federal election laws. “A new report tonight states that Postal Service employees were allowed to take leave from their jobs and still get paid as they campaigned for Hillary Clinton last year,” announced Fox News Channel Anchor Bret Baier during Special Report. Even in light of the report by the Postal Service’s oversight office, ABC, CBS, and NBC failed to inform their viewers.
On Wednesday, President Trump’s bipartisan Commission on Election Integrity, led by Vice President Mike Pence, assembled for the first time. The commission’s responsibility was to investigate possible election fraud and other election related criminal behavior. Despite the importance of this commission, ABC and NBC failed to give the commission any time at all during their evening broadcasts. CBS was the only network in the Big Three to mention it, but they were skeptical and mislead on its intentions.
The broadcast networks' obsession with all things Russia continues: Over the last ten days (July 9 to July 18, including weekends), the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts have devoted nearly two hours (114 minutes) to the ongoing probe of potential 2016 collusion -- far more airtime than they devoted to any other political topic.
Early Tuesday morning, the Trump administration issued new sanctions against well over a dozen Iranian citizens and organizations in retaliation for the county’s recent destabilizing and hostile actions in the region. CBS Evening News was the only network news outlet to report the new sanctions to their viewers. But in addition, they struck a skeptical tone on the administration’s claims against Iran as White House and Senior Foreign Affairs Correspondent Margaret Brennan sat down to chat with Iran’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Javad Zarif.
Republican hopes of repealing and replacing ObamaCare hit yet another brick wall in the Senate on Tuesday, effectively killing current efforts. While the other networks in the Big Three (ABC and NBC) remarked on the failure of action after seven years of promises, the reporting on CBS Evening News took on a mocking tone filled with glee. “They control the White House and the Congress, but Republicans could not deliver on the promise they've been making since the day ObamaCare became law: to repeal and replace it,” quipped Anchor Anthony Mason at the top of the program.
The Trump administration took swift action against two high ranking officials at the Manchester VA Medical Center in New Hampshire on Sunday. The firings came one day after The Boston Globe published a scathing expose on the atrocious conditions present at the VA hospital. But despite the horrendous conditions and the Trump administration’s decisive action, the Big Three Networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) ignored everything.
On Monday, the Iranian government handed down its twisted form of justice when they sentenced an American graduate student to 10 years in prison on spying allegations. “That sentence comes on the day President Trump is supposed to decide on a key matter concerning the nuclear deal with the Islamic republic,” announced Anchor Bret Baier on Fox News Channel’s Special Report. The Big Three Networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) completely ignored the story, but they went gaga for a dog and a baby deer.
What has been reported by many but ignored by the Big Three Networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) is that Jane Sanders, the wife of Senator Bernie Sanders, is currently under an “accelerated” investigation by the FBI for bank fraud. And on Saturday, The New York Times was openly worried about what it could do for the Senator’s chances in upcoming elections. The investigation “is threatening to take some of the luster off the senator’s populist appeal,” wrote Yamiche Alcindor, national reporter for the paper.
Things got a little heated during CNN’s Reliable Sources on Sunday when former Editor for The New York Observer Ken Kurson called out the media for acting as the opposition party to President Donald Trump. “So, the idea here is that the media have become the opposition to Trump … I mean, just listening to the intro to this show,” he told his host, CNN’s ridiculous figure Brian Stelter. As would be expected, that didn’t sit well with Stelter who pretended the media don’t have a disdain for the President.
On Sunday, Jay Sekulow, a lawyer for President Trump, appeared on ABC’s This Week to discuss the latest developments in the Russia story, particularly those involving the President’s son and son-in-law. Towards the end of the interview, Jon Karl pressed Sekulow about the concerns of presidential pardons, citing the worries of Senate Democrat Mark Warner. But no matter how many times Sekulow explained that he didn’t know the President’s position on the question, Karl kept insisting he was saying Trump was seriously thinking about it.
One of the revelations that came out of the e-mails released by Donald Trump Jr. on Tuesday was that his brother-in-law Jared Kushner was present, at least for a short time, during the meeting with the Russian lawyer. And ever since then, Democrats had been calling for him to lose his job. And during Thursday’s edition of NBC Nightly News, the network aided them in their endeavor. “Kushner was in the meeting with that Russian attorney and Donald Trump Jr., and now Democrats are questioning why he still has his security clearance or his job,” announced Anchor Lester Holt.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell unveiled the revised version of the GOP health care bill on Thursday, which added provisions meant to entice both the conservative and left-leaning members of the Republican Party. And despite the fact that the Congressional Budget Office had yet to release their report on the revisions, the Big Three Networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) wasted no time in tearing it down with the usual fake news of massive cuts to Medicaid.
Following the revelations found in Donald Trump Jr.’s e-mails earlier in the week, the media have put greater focus on President Trump’s close-knit family. So late Wednesday night, during CNN Tonight, the network’s presidential historian Douglas Brinkley went on an angry rant where he railed against the Trumps as a family. And in addition, made baseless accusations about what White House staffers thought about them and their desire to work there.
Many climate change alarmists were in full panic mode on Wednesday after scientists announced that a truly massive sheet of ice weighing 1 trillion tons and the size of Delaware had finally broken off of the continent. The fear continued during the evening broadcasts of the Big Three Networks as ABC and NBC were more than happy to contribute to the hysteria. "At the bottom of the world tonight a massive fracture on the continent of Antarctica has caused one of the biggest icebergs on record to break away into the ocean. It's so big it could fill Lake Erie twice over,” hyped Anchor Lester Holt during NBC Nightly News.
The American political world was rocked Tuesday when Donald Trump Jr. released a series of e-mails that showed he was approached by and met with, someone who appeared to have ties to Russia and claimed to have damaging information about Hillary Clinton. The shocking revelation dominated the evening news coverage of the Big Three Networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC). Of the total time spent on news (minus commercials and teasers), the e-mails commanded 54 percent of the total coverage on the three networks.
Instead of covering the news of the day, CBS News Sunday Morning chose to lecture their viewers about why it was a bad thing to call someone a “snowflake.” “It's the political putdown of the moment: snowflake. And to its fans, Faith Salie has one word of advice: chill,” hyped host Jane Pauley as she led into the segment. A measured tone for a segment that freely smeared conservatives.
The Washington Post published an extensively detailed investigative report on Monday that documented the ongoing and accelerating FBI probe into the alleged bank fraud of Jane Sanders. “A federal investigation into a land deal led by Jane Sanders, the wife and political adviser of Sen. Bernie Sanders, has accelerated in recent months,” they wrote. But the Big Three Networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) had no interest in sharing the report that’s highly damaging to the socialist Senator. Instead, they focused on smearing President Trump and Senate Republicans.
On Sunday, July 2, President Trump tweeted out a meme of himself wrestling WWE Chairman Vince McMahon with the CNN logo over his face. That same day, CNN’s Brian Stelter took to his show Reliable Sources where he and his panel of liberal reporters decried Trump as “dangerous” and a “fascists.” A full week later, Stelter and another stacked panel of journalists were defending CNN’s legally questionable tactics of tracking down the meme creator and threating to reveal his identity.