Campaigns & Elections

On today's Morning Joe, Josh Earnest said that President Obama believes that picking Biden as his VP was the "smartest decision he ever made in politics." Joe Scarborough drew the mischievous-but-logical inference that Obama must thus believe it was smarter than picking Hillary as his Secretary of State.  Though Mika interrupted to say that's not what he meant, Earnest never said boo to counter…

All three networks on Monday hyped the possible presidential run of Joe Biden, but only NBC's journalists used the word "gaffe" in relation to the Vice President. Today reporter Andrea Mitchell offered a delicate explanation, saying that the Democrat has been known for "excessive exuberance."  The journalist reminded, "Biden has run for president twice before, and stumbled. And as Vice President…

On Monday’s NBC Today, 9 a.m. ET hour co-hosts Tamron Hall and Willie Geist mourned Jon Stewart’s final week anchoring The Daily Show. Hall proclaimed: “Oh my goodness, it is the end of an era. In a few days Jon Stewart will bid farewell to The Daily Show and all of us.” Hall was particularly worried about Stewart’s absence following Thursday’s first Republican presidential debate: “What the…

On Sunday’s Reliable Sources, CNN’s Brian Stelter told Jennifer Palmieri, Hillary Clinton’s communications director, that “there have not been that many complaints about press access with your media, as opposed to prior Clinton campaigns.” 

One of the more outrageous chapters during presidential campaign season so far, the press harassment of 2016 GOP candidate and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker in February over his statement that he "doesn't know" whether President Barack Obama is a Christian, is back. Nobody in the press seems interested in asking Obama himself how he can still profess to be a Christian and support homosexual…

On Sunday’s This Week, political commentator Cokie Roberts continued to praise Hillary Clinton for playing the grandmother card throughout her presidential campaign. During a discussion about Joe Biden’s potential White House bid, Roberts cheered Clinton for going after the GOP on “climate change for instance when she says everybody says I'm not a scientist. She says I'm not a scientist either, I…

On Sunday’s Good Morning America, ABC reporter Mary Bruce went to bat for Vice President Joe Biden as he contemplates a potential White House run in 2016. The ABC reporter heavily spun for Biden regarding is numerous gaffes as she proclaimed “[h]e's also had his fair share of stumbles. From back rubs to BFD’s. Biden is a gaffemaking machine. But those oh that Joe moments are part of his political…

On Thursday, Curtis Houck at NewsBusters noted how the Big Three networks and the two leading Spanish-language networks ignored the latest developments in the now 813 day-old IRS targeting scandal. As usual, only Fox News covered a congressional hearing on, in Fox's words, "the lack of accountability following the IRS targeting of tea party and other groups" as well as a federal judge's threat "…

On Friday's NBC Nightly News, Lester Holt badgered former Florida Governor Jeb Bush on the issues of race and racism. Holt underlined how "12 percent of African-Americans, 25 percent of Latinos have a favorable view of the Republican Party," and asked, "Is it a perception problem, or is this party fundamentally out of touch – tone-deaf – to minority communities?" He later played up how Bush "…

Friday's World News Tonight on ABC failed to mention that 37 out of 1,000 of Hillary Clinton's e-mails from her private e-mail server, which were released earlier in the day, contained information that is considered "confidential." Substitute anchor Elizabeth Vargas did give a 28-second news brief on the "flood of documents from the Hillary Clinton campaign" that include tax forms from between…

Liberal MSNBC anchor Lawrence O'Donnell on Thursday night slammed Ronald Reagan, sneering that he was the "Donald Trump of his time." O'Donnell asserted that, just like Trump and Sarah Palin, Reagan was a liar on subjects like Medicare. Comparing Reagan to Trump, O'Donnell insulted, "One of the loudest opponents of Medicare was actor Ronald Reagan, who was then the Donald Trump of his time, a…

When it comes to debates the Oxford Union, which bills itself as the "world's most prestigious debating society," remains the gold standard.... Oxford Union debates produce useful information. The same cannot be said for U.S. presidential debates.

Talking to the latest Republican to enter the 2016 presidential race, former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore, on Fox News’s Special Report Thursday, Associated Press White House correspondent Julie Pace worried about the makeup of the GOP field: “If you look at the 17 Republican candidates right now, there's not much diversity in terms of gender and race. What does that say to the American public…

David Roberts has penned a tale of two media, dealing first with how a profusion of conservative outlets has pulled the Republican party to the right -- the subject of a recent Harvard study -- then pivoting to analyze the mainstream media’s belated (and still incomplete) awakening to the GOP’s “radicalism.” “One of the longstanding critiques of mainstream media on the left,” wrote Roberts in a…