In the NY Times, 'Immigration Hardliners' in Arizona Draw 'Scorn' From
The National section of Thursday's New York Times led with “Arizona Lawmakers Push New Round of Immigration Restrictions.” Phoenix Bureau Chief Marc Lacey did not sound pleased with the prospect, pitting unidentified opponents of the proposals against "immigration hardliners." Never mind that the proposals would target illegal immigration, not legal.
Illegal immigrants would be barred from…
Chris Jansing Tries to Link Giffords Shooter With Fringe Right-Wing
MSNBC's Chris Jansing, referencing a report by the liberal Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) on "active U.S. hate groups," asked Wednesday if the rise of radical right-wing groups coincided with the motives behind Jared Loughner's assassination attempt on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.).
When asked about the "hate groups" report, guest Mark Potok of the SPLC immediately pointed to the…
CNN: Tiny Pro-Illegal Immigrant Rally Gets More Coverage Than March Fo
CNN devoted three and a half minutes of coverage on Monday's Newsroom to a protest by "two dozen, maybe three dozen" people who were against two proposed laws targeting illegal immigration in Arizona. The network showed live and taped footage of this liberal protest. By contrast, CNN spent a mere 11 seconds to the March for Life in January and showed no footage from the pro-life demonstration…
ABC Sets Up Sting Operation to Find Racism in AZ Immigration Law, Hire
ABC and reporter John Quinones on Thursday stretched the bounds of journalism, hiring an actor to play a racist security guard as a way of testing how the people of Arizona would react to the state's "anti-immigration law."
Previewing the network's "What Would You Do?" segment for Friday's Primetime Live, Quinones explained the undercover concept: "So, I go undercover, pretending to be…
Newsweek's Ben Adler Thinks He's Found 'Rand Paul's Abortion Hypocrisy
Promising his Twitter followers a look at "Rand Paul's Abortion Hypocrisy," Newsweek staffer Ben Adler linked to a January 28 story he wrote for the magazine's The Gaggle blog misleadingly entitled "Rand Paul Wants to Ban Abortions and End Birthright Citizenship."
Olbermann Suggests Palin & Other Conservatives ‘Slightly Less Madmen
As he hosted a special two-hour edition of Countdown on Saturday night to cover the violent attack on Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann ended up delivering a "Special Comment" in which he called for an end to the use of violent imagery by political figures of all ideologies, even apologizing for his own history, but he also at one point seemed to describe…
AP Item on Martinez's Inauguration in NM Notes 'Place in History,' Omi
A brief January 1 item from the Associated Press's Barry Massey on the inauguration of Susana Martinez ("Martinez becomes NM gov as new year starts") began as follows:
Republican Susana Martinez has claimed her place in history as New Mexico's first female governor, taking office with the start of the new year.
If it weren't for the "place in history" part, I might have blown right by it…
In Show-Ending Poem, CBS's Schieffer Spins Christmas Classic Into Crit
Ending Sunday's "Face the Nation" in poetic fashion, CBS's Bob Schieffer gave a year-end commentary where he portrayed John Boehner as the flustered "orange-faced" leader of a divided House GOP. Schieffer also snidely criticized the Arizona immigration law.
"His face was bright orange, a sun-tan hall-of-famer. / I knew in a flash – it must be John Boehner," spoke Schieffer, painting the…
Time’s Joe Klein: Tea Party Will Be ‘Biggest Losers’ Next Year
Appearing as a panel member on Sunday’s syndicated Chris Matthews Show, Time columnist Joe Klein predicted that the Tea Party will be the "biggest losers" next year after he agreed with MSNBC’s Howard Fineman that the conservative movement represented the "biggest winners" this year. Klein: "I'm going to go with the Tea Party, with the caveat that even though they were the biggest winners of…
Best of 2010: Media Scolded Americans as Anti-Islamic, Anti-Immigrant
Condemning everyday Americans as racist, anti-immigrant Islamophobes was a favorite media theme in 2010, as documented by the Media Research Center's year-end Best Notable Quotables of 2010. Polls showed most Americans supported Arizona's effort to curb illegal immigration and opposed building an Islamic center near the site of the destroyed World Trade Center towers — but on both scores the…
PBS’s Gordon Peterson Suggests Dream Act Would Pass if Illegal Immig
On Friday’s Inside Washington on PBS, during a discussion of President Obama’s failure to secure passage of the Dream Act in the Senate, after panel member Evan Thomas of Newsweek asserted that "stupid politics" was behind the bill’s defeat, host Gordon Peterson brought up a quip by humorist Jimmy Tingle that "if they all looked like Norwegians, there’d be no problem."
After introducing the…
ABC’s Cokie Roberts Omits ‘Illegal’ from Dream Act Talk, Calls T
Appearing on Thursday’s Good Morning America to discuss the recent legislative activity in Congress, ABC’s Cokie Roberts managed to avoid using the word "illegal" as she recounted the failure by Senate Democrats to pass the Dream Act to provide a mechanism for the children of illegal immigrants to obtain citizenship. Framing the Senate vote as a "disappointment" for Obama, she went on to…
Enthralled White House Press Corps Pose Sycophantic ‘Questions’ to
“There weren’t a lot of hard questions in this news conference,” FNC’s Bret Baier observed on Special Report in the understatement of the night. Indeed, in the first question posed at the late Wednesday afternoon session, Caren Bohan of Reuters reflected the collective glow of the White House press corp basking in Barack Obama’s glory:
You racked up a lot of wins in the last few weeks that…
New York Times Laments 'Painful Setback' to 'Dream Act' Amnesty for Il
New York Times reporter Julia Preston’s “news analysis” on Sunday on the Senate defeat of legislation granting amnesty to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, known as the Dream Act by supporters (“Immigration Vote Leaves Obama’s Policy in Disarray”) is a reversal of the emotion displayed in her previous celebratory coverage of even the puniest symbolic gatherings of pro-“Dream Act”…
