ABC's Ashleigh Banfield Frets Over War of Words Between Clinton and 'R

Good Morning America's Ashleigh Banfield on Sunday spun Bill Clinton's continuing attack on talk radio as a "war of words" between the ex-President and the "right-wing polemics [sic]." The former MSNBC host joined ABC in 2009 after a bitter departure from that cable network. [Audio available here.] On Sunday, Banfield provided no ideological description for Clinton. Yet, regarding Rush Limbaugh…
Scott Whitlock

CNN's Brown Touts 'Rise in Right Wing Extremism;' Guest: SPLC 'Exagger

On her CNN program on Monday, Campbell Brown forwarded one of the Left's talking points about the tea parties by stating that "it does appear that we are seeing a rise in right wing extremism recently." However, her guest, historian Robert Churchill of the University of Hartford, downplayed her claim and claimed that groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center were "exaggerating" the threat.Brown…
Matthew Balan

Big Three Nets' Evening News Ratings Crater to Summer 2009 Levels Two

Two weeks ago (noted at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), the combined audience for the Big Three Networks' Evening News shows for the week of March 29 fell to just below 20 million. That audience was about 5% less than what Matt Drudge in the summer of 2006 headlined as "TV's Lowest Week." The Big Three's combined audience crawled back above 20 million during the week of April 5. But Chris Ariens of…
Tom Blumer

NYT's Frank Rich Repelled By Criticism of His Sliming of Tea Partiers

One clue that health care is not being well received among the public: Liberal media members, instead of celebrating the wonderful era of health-care access to come, can't stop obsessing over unsubstantiated allegations of racism among Tea Party activists, as if trying to change the subject.New York Times columnist Frank Rich's super-sized entry on Sunday, “Welcome to Confederate History Month,”…
Clay Waters

NBC: Screw Your Neighbors -- Walking Away from Your Mortgage is 'Ethic

Surprise: NBC finally found a business it likes - even a business decision it likes: companies that help homeowners who decide to walk away from their mortgages. "New figures show foreclosures in the U.S. are up about 35-percent from a year ago," Matt Lauer kicked off an April 20 segment of "Today" that encouraged homeowners - even those financially comfortable - to simply walk away. "And a…
Anthony Kang

Newsweek's Kliff Laments 'Lack of Passion' Among Millennial Generation

"How can the next generation defend abortion rights when they don't think abortion rights need defending?"That's the question posed by the subheader to Sarah Kliff's article for the April 26 dead-tree edition of Newsweek entitled, "Remember Roe!" You may recall Kliff as the Newsweek staffer who complained that the House of Representatives has an "anti-abortion rights majority." In her April 26…
Ken Shepherd

Study: Online Media Don't Polarize Like Critics Claim

Update - 12:48 PM | Lachlan Markay: David Brooks weighs in. See his thoughts below.One of the gripes about online journalism often aired by the Helen Thomases and the Chuck Todds of the world is that online news consumers will only consume news that reinforces their worldview or political beliefs. A new scholarly study challenges that assumption.The study, conducted by Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse…
Lachlan Markay

Bloomberg Editor Al Hunt Attacks Tea Partiers: 'That's Not America

Bloomberg Washington Editor Al Hunt appeared on the web-only section of Sunday's This Week and dismissed the idea that the Tea Party movement has broad appeal. He derided, "They love Glenn Beck and they're skeptical of John McCain. That's not America." Hunt's comments pivoted off of remarks from the conservative George Will, who pointed to a new Rasmussen poll showing Americans more in line with…
Scott Whitlock

Bachmann Warns Media, Democrats 'Singing off Same Hymnal' to Achieve F

It's pretty obvious that oftentimes the media and the Democratic Party work in concert to marginalize opposition of a common goal. ABC's George Stephanopoulos working with White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was just one example. The question is, how far will the media and Democrats take it?  According to Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., if the passage of ObamaCare is evidence, they're…
Jeff Poor

Bachmann Warns Media, Democrats 'Singing off Same Hymnal' to Achieve F

Minnesota congresswoman alludes to left, journalists targeting Beck, Limbaugh, Palin and other conservatives to silence voices of opposition.
Jeff Poor

Today Ignores Pew Poll on Less Trusted Government, Publicizes Pew Resu

A new Pew poll that shows just 22 percent of respondents trust the government was actually covered by NBC Nightly News on Monday night but for some reason NBC's Today show didn't find that news interesting as they failed to report on the results. However, on Tuesday's Today, they did find a Pew poll they did like, their results on teen texting, as Today co-anchor Ann Curry relayed: "The study by…
Geoffrey Dickens

WaPo Fawns Over Lawyer 'Taking Bites Out of [Catholic Church's] A

Jeff Anderson, a lawyer that has filed over 1,500 lawsuits against the Catholic Church, got a free 1,400-word advertisement in the Washington Post April 19. The supposedly non-opinion article was titled "Jeff Anderson, jousting with the Vatican from a small law office in St. Paul." The reporter, Peter Slevin, cast the Catholic Church as the big, bad wolf and Jeff Anderson - the "Vatican's chief…
Carolyn Plocher

Maddow and Guest Eugene Robinson Trumpet Alleged Goldman Sachs Fraud a

How do you know when laws are working as intended? When liberals want to rewrite them.On her MSNBC show Friday night, Rachel Maddow compared the alleged Goldman Sachs fraud to a "mean old man" in "Tiny Town, US" bribing the owner of "Ye Olde Donut Shoppe" to serve his customers chlorine in their coffee instead of non-dairy creamer, because "mean old man" had taken out life insurance policies on…
Jack Coleman

Open Thread

NB Staff