Hoda Kotb
The brother of a murder victim shocked a courtroom on Wednesday as he offered an overtly religious act of forgiveness, urging the killer to turn to Jesus Christ. But you wouldn’t know that from the network morning show coverage on Thursday. Today, Good Morning America and CBS This Morning skipped the appeal to faith, instead portraying it as more generalized forgiveness. Later in the day, View co-host Joy Behar rejected the call to grace and instead insisted, “I think to hold onto the rage gives you strength.”
Appearing on Monday’s Today show to promote a new movie, Alec Baldwin dismissed President Trump’s criticism of how the actor portrays him on Saturday Night Live. Baldwin claimed that he “can’t care” what Trump thinks and lamented the “dark history” that has supposedly occurred since the President took office.
In two separate mediums on Wednesday, openly gay actress Ellen Page and actor Tyler Perry did their best to respectively downplay and defend the alleged hate crime hoax concocted, rehearsed, and carried out by Empire star Jesse Smollett with two Nigerian bodybuilders who had been his drug suppliers.
On Wednesday morning, only NBC’s Today show mentioned lawyers for Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandmann filing a lawsuit against the Washington Post for the liberal newspaper’s defamatory coverage of him following false reports that Sandmann and his classmates were the instigators of a confrontation with a Native American activist at the Lincoln Memorial in January.
All three morning shows on Friday reacted with extreme alarm to the news that Donald Trump would declare a state of emergency on the southern border in order to fund a wall. CBS This Morning journalists sounded down right apocalyptic, warning that the republic was in danger. Co-host Bianna Golodryga opened the show this way: “We begin with President Trump who is poised to take action today that could test our 230-year-old system of checks and balances in government.”
While people in the mainstream media were delighted that Democrat “rising star” Beto O’Rourke held a “counter-rally” to President Trump’s visit to the border in El Paso, Texas, their coverage of Monday’s event was far from complete. Among the aspects of the rally that eluded the reporters’ attention were the people in the crowd who took great pleasure in slamming a large piñata that resembled Donald Trump and the Mexican flags carried by a number of participants.
On Friday, all three network morning shows eagerly touted the Supreme Court temporarily blocking a Louisiana law set to go into effect that would require abortion providers to have hospital admitting privileges. The same hosts and correspondents that breathlessly hyped the “big story” completely ignored an extreme late-term abortion law being passed in New York State just two weeks ago.
On Tuesday, all three network morning shows were thrilled with Democratic Party talking points preemptively dismissing President Trump’s upcoming immigration speech as nothing but “malice and misinformation.” Reporters touted how liberal lawmakers were “demanding equal time” in the media to response to Trump’s prime-time address.
All three networks went into red alert on Friday, hyperventilating about the “chaos” of a shutdown showdown after Donald Trump “torpedoed” a deal as he demanded funding for a border wall. Of course, the blame went to Republicans. Today co-host Hoda Kotb blasted, “Critics saying it is up to the President and his party to break the gridlock.”
Appearing on NBC’s Today show Tuesday to exclusively reveal Time’s Person of the Year, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Edward Felsenthal first discussed the runners up, which included President Trump. After lamenting how the President “showed the weaknesses in our system,” the journalist happily declared that 2018 “was a year when the system fought back.”
On Monday morning, Time Magazine released its top ten “shortlist” ahead of the Tuesday reveal for its annual “Person of the Year” issue and many of the nominees came as no surprise. Whether it was the March for Our Lives students or Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, it was a liberal list made in heaven.
Like much of the media, ABC News celebrated the announcement from Dick’s Sporting Goods that it would be restricting gun sales following the Parkland school shooting in February. However, when it was reported on Wednesday that the retail chain was suffering a financial backlash for the decision, ABC was the only broadcast network to ignore the story.