Sharpton Suggests OK for Hillary to Have Attacked Monica Lewinsky

What's more sexist: Donald Trump saying "schlonged" to describe the way Hillary Clinton lost in 2008, or Hillary herself orchestrating a campaign to discredit and destroy women, including Monica Lewinsky, whose "bimbo eruptions" threatened Bill and Hillary's hold on power?  According to Al Sharpton on today's Morning Joe, Trump's offense is the graver. Sharpton suggests that Hillary's attack on…
Mark Finkelstein

Trump ‘Attacking Bill Clinton’ Exasperates NBC’s Andrea Mitchell

You could hear it in her voice. Hosting Meet the Press on Sunday, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell was clearly exasperated by Donald Trump daring to warn Hillary Clinton he would raise Bill Clinton’s “penchant for sexism” if he campaigns for her. Mitchell was so annoyed by it that she brought it up during three segments. First, with Bernie Sanders, she let out a loud sigh in highlighting Trump “attacking”…
Brent Baker

Salon Cries Homophobia, Compares NFL to Westboro Baptists

In a world full of hot takes, Salon writer Steve Almond went full supernova with this headline in a recent article: Odell Beckham and the NFL’s fear of gay men: “Football is the most homophobic subculture this side of the Westboro Baptist Church”
Dylan Gwinn

Welcome Candor From Spike Lee: 'Not Always Policemen' Shooting Blacks

Only Nixon could go to China, according to one of the more enduring political truths of the last half-century. Just as only a man of color with undeniable credibility in the black community can publicly utter an undeniable truth -- it's not only police who are killing black people in this country, though you'd never know it from much of the media coverage.  
Jack Coleman

ESPN Analyst: ‘Concussion' Movie Lies About Dave Duerson

The producers and directors of the movie Concussion might not want to ask ESPN’s Robert Smith how many thumbs-up he wants to give their new movie. Because, based on his tweets this weekend, Smith might extend them an entirely different digit.
Dylan Gwinn

Bill Nye the Nutty Guy Claims No One Says 'Climate Change' on TV

At 30, MSNBC guest host Luke Russert  is young enough to gush over Bill Nye the Science Guy by saying he used to watch his Nineties PBS show when they had a substitute science teacher in class. But in this December 23 interview, Nye got weird and insisted no one on TV says the words “climate change.” Is this guy a scientist? This is like saying no one on TV says the word “politics.” “We have a…
Tim Graham

IBD Notes Three Global Warming Stories The U.S. Press Has Ignored

Yesterday, I noted that Associated Press reporter Karl Ritter actually wrote, and AP actually published, a story about how complying with the Paris climate agreement would require greenhouse gas emissions "To Drop Below Zero." Perhaps Ritter, whose beat includes "cover(ing) climate change, from UN negotiations to Arctic melt," looked around and realized that if he didn't put out something…
Tom Blumer

Year-End Awards: The Hopeless Haters Award

Since last week, NewsBusters has been presenting each category from the Media Research Center’s “Best Notable Quotables of 2015,” our annual awards for the year’s worst journalism. Today, the “Hopeless Haters Award,” for the worst quotes denigrating the conservative GOP presidential candidates. Winning the top slot: MSNBC Morning Joe regular Donny Deutsch, who on March 23 slammed just-declared…
Rich Noyes

WashPost Laments Hawaii's 'Embarrassing' Failure to Honor Obama

This is what occurs in a slow-news environment at The Washington Post: they lament the lack of honors for Barack Obama. The front page of Saturday’s paper carried the headline “Hawaii wipes out in Obama honors.” Reporters Greg Jaffe and Juliet Eilperin spent 1,286 words unspooling  the “embarrassing record” of Hawaii’s failure to name more than a snowcone after the current president.
Tim Graham

Maddow Producer: GOP Nutty Even By Global Standards

President Obama considers the Republican party an international outlier, and so does MSNBC's Steve Benen. (That’s “outlier,” not “outlaw,” though, who knows, for them that may be a distinction without a difference.) After quoting Obama’s recent comment that the GOP is “the only major party that I can think of in the advanced world that effectively denies climate change,” Benen, who’s also the…
Tom Johnson

HuffPo: We Should Unplug Our Energy-Burning Christmas Decorations

In the annual competition between leftist media outlets for the screwiest (or most Scrooge-like) criticism of Christmas traditions, a Huffingon Post item published Thursday morning by Michael McLaughlin (HT Breitbart) was a formidable entry. After the HuffPo reporter's headline noted that "U.S. Christmas Lights Burn More Energy Than Some Nations In A Year," he suggested that "maybe we should…
Tom Blumer

Media Help Hillary Oddly Hype Slick Willie as a 'Secret Weapon'

One of the more tiresome cliches of political coverage is the “secret weapon.” Twenty years ago, Hillary Clinton was promoted as her husband’s “secret weapon.” Now it’s the reverse. Peter Nicholas of  The Wall Street Journal wrote a story aping the Clinton spin, headlined “Hillary Clinton’s ‘Secret Weapon’ Could Escalate Campaign Rhetoric.” Bill has been described by reporters as a secret weapon…
Tim Graham

NY Times Reporter Is Not Amused; Rolls Eyes at Jeb’s Dry Wit

In Saturday’s New York Times, reporter Matt Flegenheimer took a hostile tone in an ostensibly light-hearted story about Jeb Bush’s surprising reserves of humor in Saturday’s “Bush Camp Suggests (Very) Secret Weapon: Its Candidate Is Funny.” Turns out Jeb! has a decent line in dry wit, but the Times resolutely refused to be amused by the struggling Republican candidate: “Who says @JebBush doesn’t…
Clay Waters

Lump of Coal from Steve Hayes, Puts Media at Top of His ‘Naughty List’

“At the very top of my naughty list” for the year, the Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes announced on the Christmas Day edition of FNC’s Special Report with Bret Baier, are “the mainstream media.” Hayes cited how “the coverage of President Obama and Hillary Clinton in particular this past year has been abysmal,” pointing to the failure to correct Obama’s “unequivocally wrong” assertions about…
Brent Baker