Tim Graham
Latest from Tim Graham
Yesterday, CBS Early Show co-host Hannah Storm asked White House aide Dan Bartlett about how most Americans think the economy is tanking: "Finally Dan, quickly, I know you came on to talk about the economy today, the President is going to address this today, there are some positive numbers but we have Ame
New ABC "World News Tonight" anchor Elizabeth Vargas has long been a team player on the liberal-bias teams at ABC and NBC. One of her most unforgettable stints -- displaying ABC's cultural bias, not political bias -- was a one-hour special highlighting the "legends" behind the novel "The DaVinci Code," and novelist Dan Brown's claims that in our nonfiction world, the Catholic Church has tried to strangle the "truth" that Jesus Christ had sex with Mary Magdalene and she took their son to France after the Crucifixion.
In Sunday’s Washington Post, Stephen Pearlstein noticed in his "Sunday Briefing" (page F-2) that "The Economy Grabs the High Ground," as the headline said. He wrote: "Defying hurricanes and inflation, rising interest rates and political gridlock, the U.S. economy demonstrated its remarkable strength and stamina last week." Despite the drama implicit in that sentence, the Post’s editors buried the news inside the paper.
One real moment in the Bozell-Mapes interview on C-SPAN2 was when Mapes said Al Gore's Vietnam record was "a perfectly legitimate story," so Bozell asked, did you do it? "I did not." But she thinks that sometime, somewhere at CBS, somebody did it. Bozell says mmm, no. No investigative piece. You may wonder: how did CBS cover Al Gore's mysteriously brief tenure in Vietnam as a military journalist? I covered that for National Review Online last year.
The Washington Post puts on the top left of its front page Monday reporter Robin Wright's story that "among the Democratic foreign-policy elite...there are stark differences -- and significant vagueness -- about a viable alternative" to ending the Iraq war successfully.
Ken Shepherd alerted me to a story ABC's Dan Harris did on "World News Tonight" on evangelical Christian sensation Rick Warren ("The Purpose-Driven Life") and his new passion for an AIDS ministry. This Harris sentence really stuck out: "He's urging them to start serving people with HIV/AIDS — a disease that many evangelicals have either long ignored or called God's punishment of gays."
Washington Post fashion writer Robin Givhan (pronounce that zhiv-AHN, darlings) has drawn great attention to herself in the last five years by writing about the fashions of America's top politicians, often with a nasty edge toward conservatives and a thoroughly enraptured take toward liberals. But today's column is a wonder. She can trash Katherine Harris, and Dick Cheney, and John Bolton.
Kudos to Washington Post columnist in reporter's clothing Dana Milbank today for his piece on the abortion debate outside the Supreme Court yesterday. It's not that it doesn't contain his usual liberal flavor, but that he quotes the protesters of both sides for readers to hear:
James Taranto begins his Opinion Journal piece today by reporting that the TV show "Journal Editorial Report" will not be discontinued after it leaves PBS. It will be moving to the Fox News Channel beginning in January. Its last PBS airing is December 2. This will no doubt annoy liberals who can't stand the Wall Street Journal's editorialists, but it's quite imaginable that those who like their PBS to be a complete liberal playground will say the Paul Gigot show is moving to its more natural home.
Associated Press reports today that routinely wacky CNN founder Ted Turner lectured at Kansas State University and echoed Howard Dean's line as a presidential candidate: "Media mogul Ted Turner said Monday that Iraq is 'no better off' following the U.S.-led invasion that ousted dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003."
Turner also said he thinks it's plausible that President Bush will launch a nuclear war:
Re Mark's report, the "Today" show also brought up Hersh yesterday in assessing the war with Barry McCaffrey and Richard Haass. But I was struck (I shouldn't be surprised) by how gloomy and negative Hersh was in his interview on CNN's "Late Edition" on Sunday. Here's the first few exchanges:
MRC analyst Michael Rule reports CBS presented the Saddam Hussein trial on "The Early Show" as a spectacle pretty much controlled by the old dictator:
Like some of the other shows, it seemed a little unanimous on CNN's "Reliable Sources" today. They began with a panel of raving leftist New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, liberal historian Robert Dallek, liberal CNN correspondent Bruce Morton, and UPI Pentagon correspondent Pam Hess, who must qualify as the most conservative one on the panel.
The Washington Post's political feature writer Mark Leibovich today reports on the jostling to succeed Sen. Jon Corzine in New Jersey, headlined "For Sen. X, D-N.J., the Line Forms to the Left." But the ideological label that might be expected in the text, Democrats on the "left," or "liberals," are never used.
Dave Huber explains at Oh, That Liberal Media that the Boston Globe erred in its headline in an AP story with the words "Teacher Under Investigation for Alleged Liberalism":
Hot right now on the NPR website: Penn Jillette (the tall, loud half of Penn & Teller) expounding his atheism as part of "This I Believe" series on "Morning Edition." This is the hot paragraph:
The 25th anniversary of John Lennon’s death in New York drew a big article in Newsweek by Jeff Giles, filled with all the normal liberal genuflections: "the man who wrote ‘Imagine,’ ‘Give Peace a Chance’ and ‘All You Need Is Love,’ which amount to the greatest ad campaign for brother- and sisterhood in history." In between that and Sinead O’Connor’s scary metaphors for Lennon ("He was my breast milk, you know?") was a series of rock star tributes to their favorite song
In his Monday chat with Charlie Rose on PBS, Ted Koppel played armchair general or armchair Secretary of State and explained why he would not have gone to war with Iraq, didn't see the urgent need to remove Saddam, saw no connection with terrorism, and worst of all, smeared Ronald Reagan as not caring about the gassing of Kurds in northern Iraq in 1988. This is, as a matter of historical record, untrue.
Ted Koppel did a long interview with Charlie Rose on PBS Monday night, a day before he retired as host of "Nightline." One segment of the interview that stuck out was their discussion of racism and racial inequality and how passionate they are about it. Koppel said it "just infuriates" him. Rose agreed: