NBC Gushes: ‘Comedian-in-Chief’ Obama Appearing on Seinfeld Web Show

On Tuesday, NBC’s Today devoted two full reports to President Obama appearing on Jerry Seinfeld’s web series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. The first report came late in the 7 a.m. ET hour, with co-host Carson Daly proclaiming: “President Obama and Jerry Seinfeld take a little spin on the South Lawn in a 1963 Corvette before they sit down for a candid conversation about life in the White House…
Kyle Drennen

Steinem: Equal Pay Would Be 'Biggest Economic Stimulus Possible'

According to feminist icon Gloria Steinem, America’s best bet for stimulating the economy isn’t tax cuts or trillions of dollars in spending, but equal pay for women. In a Dec. 15 interview with Fusion, Steinem claimed that “Equal pay for women of all races would be the biggest economic stimulus the economy could possibly have.” She specifically said it would be “way better” than the last…
Sam Dorman

Press Exaggerates Nov. Existing-Home Sales Plunge by Ignoring Raw Data

The business press worships at the altar of seasonally adjusted data. Most journalists covering the economy don't even bother looking at raw, not seasonally adjusted data, which in layman's terms is best understood as "what actually happened." As I have shown for nearly a decade, this is often a big mistake. On the rare occasions when reporters take the initiative to look at the raw data, they…
Tom Blumer

Elle: Fetus on Newsweek Cover Looks ‘Like Baby,’ Not ‘Pregnancy'

One women’s magazine is hyperventilating over the fact that an image of a fetus actually looks like… a baby. Writing for Elle magazine, Sady Doyle recently criticized a Newsweek December cover in a piece titled “Why Does Newsweek’s ‘Abortion Wars’ Cover Show a Cartoon Fetus Instead of a Woman?” Doyle commended the magazine for tackling abortion in its new cover story – but bashed the cover…
Katie Yoder

HuffPost Guest Says Military 'Marginalizes' Atheists During Christmas

Have you heard about the Christmastime plight of atheists and humanists in the military? Apparently, they’re feeling marginalized.
Sarah Stites

Year-End Awards: The Damn Those Conservatives Award

We began detailing the Media Research Center’s “Best Notable Quotables of 2015” yesterday with the awards for the gooiest Obamagasms of the year. Today, we have the perennial “Damn Those Conservatives Award,” our annual look at the nasty rhetoric that liberal journalists fling at conservatives. (Thanks to our 39 judges who patiently reviewed dozens of quotes to select the very worst of the worst…
Rich Noyes

It's War! 'Elitist' Scarborough vs. 'Nativist' Rubio

In the past, Joe Scarborough hasn't exactly hidden his disdain for Marco Rubio, saying he reminds him of an eager student government candidate and questioning his integrity. But things have now escalated to open warfare between the two.  Scarborough, responding to an ad in which Rubio speaks of feeling "out of place in our own country," tweeted an attack accusing Rubio of playing a "crass,…
Mark Finkelstein

Hardball Opens with Star Wars Credits Parody; 'Civil War' in GOP

Seeking to join in on the Star Wars: The Force Awakens hype, MSNBC’s Hardball kicked off Monday’s show with a spoof of the famous franchise’s opening credits that told of a “period of civil war within the Republican party” and “President Obama, Hillary Clinton, & the Republican establishment appear to have formed a coalition rejecting [Donald] Trump’s appeal to the DARK SIDE.”
Curtis Houck

Bernie Sanders Endorsed by Union Representing Major Media Personnel

James Warren at Poynter MediaWire noted that last week, Bernie Sanders picked up the endorsement of the Communications Workers of America, a 600,000-member union that includes 26,000 members of the NewsGuild – representing “journalists at The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Boston Globe, San Jose Mercury News, digital start-up Truthout…
Tim Graham

CBS Sports Host Gottlieb Deletes Anti-Gun, Anti-Constitution Tweets

Apparently the Doug Gottlieb Constitutional Law/Anti-2nd Amendment forum has now closed. As we wrote last night, CBS Sports’ Doug Gottlieb launched into one of the more bizarre and insanely dumb twitter rants you’re ever going to see.
Dylan Gwinn

U of L: Prof. Position is Only For Blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans

Did you hear about the university which advertised for "a tenure-track Assistant Professor position that will be filled by a White American or Asian American"? Of course you didn't, because it didn't happen. But it's not difficult to imagine the outrage which would justifiably ensue if such an ad were ever placed. Well, last week it became widely known that the University of Louisville placed an…
Tom Blumer

Michael Steele Dings Howard Dean: 'You're Shilling for Hillary'

Spine of Steele! Where has this feisty Michael Steele been? In this NewsBuster's view, the former RNC chairman has too often been the voice of the mushy Republican middle.  But on MSNBC's All In this evening, Steele forcefully advanced the GOP cause. For starters, Steele shocked guest host Alex Wagner when he said Donald Trump would beat Hillary Clinton in a debate. Steele then took on Howard…
Mark Finkelstein

NYT Sends Obama Into 2016 in Style, Brimming With 'Accomplishments'

New York Times White House reporter Julie Hirschfeld Davis is sending Barack Obama into 2016 in style, with three successive stories focusing on various flattering angles of the president, who is shedding the lame duck stereotype and laying down accomplishments -- at least according to Davis -- although the poor president can’t enjoy a holiday getaway without world events intruding. On Monday she…
Clay Waters

Maddow Producer: GOP’s Foreign Policy ‘Cringe-Worthy…Pathetic’

Though Steve Benen, who's also the primary blogger for the MSNBC program's website, is a true-blue liberal, he thinks highly of the foreign-policy chops of some recent Republicans. In a Thursday post, Benen wrote that GOPers such as Richard Lugar and Brent Scowcroft were “learned” and “approached international affairs with [a] degree of maturity.” That was then; this is now. Benen touched on,…
Tom Johnson