Nicholas Fondacaro
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MSNBC’s Joy Reid, who was swift to condemn Republican concerns of voter fraud, was equally as fast at accusing them of plotting to steal the election. Reid’s concern centered on a computer system called CrossCheck which was developed to find duplicate names on the voter rolls so they can be removed. But Reid and her guest Rolling Stone writer Greg Palast, who brought the issue to her attention, accuse the system of targeting minorities. “The system disproportionality targets voters of color who are likely to have common surnames, like Washington or Hernandez,” Reid stated.
On his Sunday show Reliable Sources, host Brian Stelter brought out a panel made up a proverbial who’s who of Donald Trump opponents to whine about how the media are being “unfair” to Hillary Clinton and going easy on Trump. “All year long, I have been hearing one very specific description of the election coverage,” Stelter stated to start off the first segment, “No, it's not bias, but it's close, it's false equivalents.” Guest Jacob Weisberg of Slate soon described Hillary v Trump as "an apple and some rancid meat.”
CNN was earning its moniker as the Clinton News Network during their morning show New Day Sunday. For the first political segment of the day, host Victor Blackwell wanted to talk about Republican Vice Presidential candidate Mike Pence’s unreleased tax returns. Even though the segment was introduced as such and the chyron indicated they would be talking about Pence all attention was put on Donald Trump’s transparency, while mentions of Hillary Clinton’s were shutdown by Blackwell.
Instead of reporting the findings of a Politico investigation which found that Bill Clinton had abused a federal program to supplement the Clinton Foundation, CBS chose to tout the campaign efforts of Vice President Joe Biden and VP candidate Tim Kaine. “Hillary Clinton left it to a couple of high-ranking surrogates to attack Trump's immigration position today,” reported fill-in anchor Maurice DuBois on CBS Evening News Thursday.
A huge story broke by Politico early Thursday morning exposes how Bill Clinton exploited a federal program for former president to grease the wheels of the Clinton Foundation. “Bill Clinton's staff used a decades-old federal government program … to subsidize his family’s foundation and an associated business, and to support his wife’s private email server,” Politico reported. As shocking as the new revelation is, the “Big Three” networks gave the incendiary story a wide berth during their evening broadcasts.
Donald Trump made a trip down to Mexico Wednesday to meet with President Enridue Pena Nieto. The two discussed the current state of US-Mexico relations, and it seems to have gone well. But following their evening news report of Trump’s visit, CBS took the time to highlight Latino-American’s mobilizing against Trump. “Immigration activists loaded into a van and headed to a local registration office where they helped Latino residents register to vote,” reported Mireya Villarreal, “For them, this election is personal.”
In a major story broke by the New York Post Wednesday, it came to light that Hillary Clinton had sent an e-mail from her private server containing classified material months after she left office. According to the Post the message contained information about the “123 Deal” with the United Arab Emirates but, “was heavily redacted upon its release by the State Department because it contains classified information.” And as would be expected, the ABC, CBS, and NBC took a pass on the shocking new development during their evening news programs.
Jorge Ramos appeared on Anderson Cooper 360 Tuesday night to discuss his favorite person to hate, Donald Trump. While on the program he promoted his anti-Trump crusade and called for journalists to put objectivity aside. Ramos argued, “I think for journalists our social responsibility, I think, is to question those who are in power and when we're confronted with racism, discrimination, corruption, public lies, dictatorships and violations of human rights I think we have to take a stand.” And he received almost no push back from host Anderson Cooper.
Hillary Clinton was caught in yet another lie about her e-mails Tuesday, following an announcement from the State Department that they discovered still more e-mails she failed to turn over. “And tonight, we have confirmation that at least some of the thousands of e-mails deleted and not turned over to the State Department dealt with the issue of Benghazi, Libya, clearly not falling into the category of personal e-mails,” remarked Fox News’ Bret Baier. And despite this, all of the “Big Three” networks failed to mention it at all on their evening programs.
The fear of a cyber-attack on the American election system seemed close to being realized Monday with a dire warning from FBI. “There’s late word tonight that the FBI is warning state election officials to pay more attention to the security of their voting systems in response to recent hacking attacks that are just now coming to light,” reported fill-in anchor Savannah Guthrie on NBC Nightly News. NBC was the only network to share the FBI’s warning, while ABC and CBS failed to mention it at all.
The news broke Monday that ObamaCare has again missed enrollment forecasts from the Congressional Budget Office, resulting in grossly limited options and high prices for consumers. “Enrollment is simply nowhere near what the congressional budget office thought it would be,” reported Fox News correspondent Kevin Corke, “Now what that means is higher costs for those of you who that take part, and for the insurers, it means they're losing money.” Even with that dire fact the “Big Three” news networks chose to cover for the Obama administration.
On CNN’s Reliable Sources Sunday, host Brian Stelter who stuck up for Hillary Clinton last weekend did so again. This time he set his sight on the Associated Press for daring to publish a story which exposed how big money donors to the Clinton Foundation received special meetings with her while she was Secretary of State. Stelter questioned why they would even publish the story following a six and a half year investigation, “did you feel the pressure to publish SOMETHING even though so many critics have said it didn’t amount to much?”
On Sunday August 28 Univision’s Jorge Ramos appeared on CNN’s Reliable Sources to talk about Donald Trump, immigration, and respond to the Media Research Center’s call for him to be removed from the anchor chair. Because of Ramos’ active opposition to Trump, MRC Founder Brent Bozell put out a statement which said, “At the very least, Univision should remove Ramos from the network’s national evening news anchor chair, from now through Election Day.” Ramos’ response was a resounding no.
MSNBC’s Joy Reid was back at it again, Saturday, shouting down a conservative guest when they talked about the facts she wants to remain hidden. This time she shouted down Alfonso Aguilar, the President of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, for daring to mention Planned Parenthood and Founder Margaret Sanger’s entrenched past in the eugenics movement. “Planned Parenthood is not a eugenicist organization,” Reid exclaimed loudly on AM Joy, “I think that is incredibly offensive.”
Disturbing news broke Thursday that for the third time in a week US Navy ships in or near the Persian Gulf were harassed by vessels maned by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. But the situation escaladed Thursday when the vessels ignored warnings and got close enough to for the USS Squall to draw warning shots. As provocative as the actions of the Iranian vessels were, they did not seem important enough for the “Big Three” network news outlet who didn’t report about the engagement at all, Thursday evening.
The war of words in the 2016 race for president reached a new level Thursday when both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton accused one another of being a “bigot.” On CBS Evening News, fill-in anchor James Brown seemed disappointed in them, starting the show off saying, “The presidential campaign may have hit a low point today, and there are still 75 days to go.” While Brown seemed disappointed, both ABC and NBC took the opportunity to pounce on Trump and praise Clinton’s attacks.
Back in 2008 the “Big Three” demanded to know all they could about Republican nominee John McCain’s health, but now it’s Hillary Clinton’s health that’s in the spotlight and the networks want little to do with it. The networks are treating talk of Clinton’s health as like more than a nuisance, with CBS declaring it, “A Trump lie about her health,” and ABC saying it’s something she can “laugh off” on a late night comedy show. This was not the standard when McCain ran in 2008, far from it in fact.
NBC seems to of have enough of the political scandal which involved an apparent pay-for-play scheme between the Clinton Foundation and the Hillary Clinton’s State Department. During Wednesday’s NBC Nightly News the network failed to mention the scandal at all, even though competitor CBS found new connections. “Of the 15 fundraisers Clinton has held over the last week, more than half have been hosted by donors who have also given to the foundation," reported Juliana Goldman on CBS Evening News.
After an Associated Press report that exposed how numerous Clinton Foundation donors were able to set up meetings with Hillary Clinton while Secretary of State, NBC correspondent and resident Clinton fangirl, Andrea Mitchell rushed to defend her on NBC Nightly News Tuesday. Mitchell seemed to be annoyed by the persistent scandal, calling it, “A headache for the Clinton campaign that could last until the election and beyond.”
News broke Tuesday via the Associated Press that, “At least 85 of 154 people from private interests who met or had phone conversations scheduled with Clinton while she led the State Department donated to her family charity or pledged commitments to its international programs.” But that didn’t seem important enough for ABC who only gave the story a total of one minute, 44 seconds between two segments, while giving the conspiracy theory about Clinton’s health two minutes, 43 seconds that same evening on World News Tonight.