Campaigns & Elections

Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, while waffling, has wanted to appear to many of his constituents as being opposed to free trade agreements, or at least wanting to renegotiate the terms of many of them. On Wednesday, the Department of Commerce issued a press release, the kind of thing you would hope business journalists get in their e-mail boxes. But I found no coverage of this…

In the lead up to the March 2003 Iraq invasion, CBS's Dan Rather interviewed Saddam Hussein.Now, less than four months before America goes to the polls to elect a new president, NBC's Brian Williams is going to interview Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.I wonder if Williams will ask the lunatic despot who he's supporting in the coming elections?Regardless of the answer, TVNewser reported…

CNN has admitted to a serious error in a report filed Thursday concerning a Republican student organization at the University of Southern California.A segment which originally aired at 6:00 AM on "American Morning," and twice after that, used a person not affiliated with the USC College Republicans to suggest the organization is having a hard time drawing support because of a lack of enthusiasm…

Barack Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy after their meeting at the Elysee Palace, in Paris, Friday, July 25, 2008. (AP Photo/Remy de la Mauviniere)

During a joint press conference between Barack Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris, CNN reporter Christiane Amanpour bizarrely connected the Illinois senator with a 2005 comment by then-Interior Minister Sarkozy that French rioters were "scum." She asked the now-president of France, "And I'm wondering whether you feel, today, when you stand next to someone you clearly admire so much, and who has…

A report by correspondent Mark Phillips on Friday’s CBS "Early Show" gave a glowing review of Barack Obama’s speech in Berlin on Thursday: "...there is a bit of a morning after feeling here in Berlin after what they're calling the 'Obama show.' But if the intent of this trip was to raise Barack Obama's foreign profile, it could hardly have been raised any higher...The stage could not have been…

Former Bill Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos firmly declared Barack Obama's trip a "clean success" on Friday's "Good Morning America." "You just cannot take that away from him," the "This Week" anchor proclaimed. Responding to a question by co-host Diane Sawyer about the visit's elaborate pageantry, Stephanopoulos asserted, "I don't think there's much risk of a backlash here." Despite the…

Is the religious affiliation of a presidential candidate's backers important?According to Time's Joe Klein, it is.In his July 23 piece entitled "McCain's Foreign Policy Frustration," Klein seemed to cross the line from geo-political analysis into anti-Semitism (emphasis added):

As NewsBusters has been reporting for a number of weeks, more and more media members seem to be losing that loving feeling for presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Barack Obama.A rather stunning example came Thursday from Gabriel Sherman of The New Republic who suggested the Obama campaign's arrogance towards journalists has gone so far "that reporters [may] be emboldened to challenge his…

Are reporters in the business of reporting fact or rumor?  Andrea Mitchell, for one, doesn't scruple to circulate "scuttlebutt" that if true would be deeply damaging to John McCain.  Barack Obama's cancellation of plans to visit injured military members at bases in Germany has drawn considerable attention and criticism.  On today's Morning Joe, Mitchell passed along an Obama-campaign inspired…

Obama's speech today in Berlin, hailed as a "major" address, has at least one major, glaring error that shows that nether Obama nor his handlers and speech writers were thoroughly familiar with the facts. Obama's main theme was about the "walls" that separate all of us one from another. He claims that many of these "walls" have been taken down and hails that as progress. But in at least one…

The screencap captures it nicely: Heather Wilson, smiling.  Robert Wexler, mouth agape. On this afternoon's Hardball, the feisty, brilliant GOP representative from New Mexico took on the duo of the combative congressman from Florida and host Chris Matthews, and walked away a winner.  The subject was Obama's Berlin speech, and by extension his presidential qualifications.You'll find excerpts…

On Wednesday, "Nightline" co-host Cynthia McFadden and correspondent David Wright condescendingly reported on the disparity in the media's coverage of Barack Obama and John McCain. McFadden began a segment on the Arizona senator by snidely asserting, "Now, if you have a younger sibling, you can probably relate to what Senator John McCain has been going through this week. Whatever he does,…

Not every reporter covering Barack Obama's world tour is entranced by the words and imagery of the Democratic candidate. On Thursday's "Good Morning America," political correspondent Jake Tapper jabbed at Obama's overconfidence, describing the senator's July 24 speech in Berlin as "one the Obama campaign is billing at almost presidential. Even though he is not the president." Reporting from…