'Balanced' New York Times 'Reporter' Kate Zernike Waxes Sarcastic on T

Tea Party beat reporter Kate Zernike was back on the reporting scene in a Thursday afternoon “Caucus” post, “A Tea Party ‘Hearing’ in the Senate That Wasn’t.” Zernike surely used up her monthly quota of sarcastic quote marks in this snarky post mocking the unofficial hearings (sorry, “hearings”) held by congressmen who support the Tea Party. By contrast, Times reporter Scott Shane was quite…
Clay Waters
November 18th, 2011 4:03 PM

Feminist Author Naomi Wolf Doubts New Yorkers Were Inconvenienced by O

Feminist author Naomi Wolf insisted on today's Now with Alex Wagner that New Yorkers were not really all that inconvenienced by the Occupy Wall Street movement. "Yesterday, commuters and small business owners couldn't get to work the Occupiers were blocking subway entrances, you [also] had the Brooklyn Bridge" pedestrian walkway crammed with Occupiers, conservative columnist S.E. Cupp…
Ken Shepherd
November 18th, 2011 3:31 PM

NBC Food Police Ask: 'What Does Congress Have Against Healthier Lunche

At the top of Thursday's NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams scolded Congress for opposing new Obama administration regulations on school lunches: "And out to lunch. Does pizza really look like a vegetable to anybody? The better question may be what does Congress have against healthier lunches for kids?" Correspondent Anne Thompson later began a report on the supposed controversy by…
Kyle Drennen
November 18th, 2011 3:11 PM

Jodi Kantor's Latest Fawnathon Over Michelle Obama in the New York Tim

New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor, whose book on the Obamas comes out in January, reappeared on Friday’s front page to fawn over Michelle Obama, “First Lady Takes On the Role of Staff Energizer.” Kantor’s book, “The Obamas,” certainly does not sound like it will afflict the comfortable couple in the White House: “Filled with riveting detail and insight into their partnership, emotions and…
Clay Waters
November 18th, 2011 2:16 PM

Piers Morgan Agrees With Obama's 'We've Been a Little Bit Lazy' Commen

CNN's Piers Morgan agreed with President Obama's statement that Americans have "been a little bit lazy" in getting foreign investors to come to America, and fellow prime-time host Erin Burnett downplayed the significance of the line on Thursday. Morgan's take on the quote was that "America has gone a bit soft on its production line," and he vouched for it. Burnett, on the other hand, said…
Matt Hadro
November 18th, 2011 1:10 PM

The Accountability Charade

You can't spell "accountability" without "A," "C" and "T." But in Washington, government officials routinely get away with "taking personal responsibility" by mouthing empty words devoid of action. Heads nod in collective agreement that mistakes were made. But heads never roll. The Obama administration has raised this accountability charade to an art form. At a House Energy Committee hearing…
Michelle Malkin
November 18th, 2011 12:57 PM

WaPo's Henneberger Delighted That 'Princess' Pelosi 'Standing Her Grou

Washington Post staff writer Melinda Henneberger -- who has admitted to having a "longtime political crush" on the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) -- authored a puffy Style section front-pager today entitled "'Princess' Pelosi standing her ground." "House leader responds to Cain, vows to do 'for child care what we did for health care,'" notes the print edition's subheader to the 19-paragraph…
Ken Shepherd
November 18th, 2011 12:22 PM

Playing Defense: NYT's Oppel Says It's 'Falsehood' for Perry to Call O

When Gov. Rick Perry attacked President Obama as an elitist, New York Times reporter Richard Oppel Jr. didn’t just quibble with or criticize the attacks as overboard, but banished them to the “realm of falsehood," in Friday's “Perry’s Latest Attacks Distort Obama’s Words and Past.”
Clay Waters
November 18th, 2011 11:58 AM

Open Thread: Jon Stewart Mocks Class Divisions at Occupy Wall Street

In case you haven't seen it yet, the Daily Show host Jon Stewart did a segment on the class divisions at Occupy Wall Street, while OWS protesters were supposedly protesting for a classless society. In the two months of occupation in Zuccotti Park, OWS had evolved a hierarchal system with an upper class living in one end of the park and a lower class living in the other end of the park. Check…
NB Staff
November 18th, 2011 10:59 AM

NBC's Chuck Todd to Hillary Clinton: Are Any GOP Candidates 'Ready to

In a portion of a softball interview with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton aired on Friday's NBC Today, chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd invited her to bash the Republican field of 2012 candidates as he skeptically wondered: "Any of these Republican presidential candidates ready to answer the 3:00 a.m. phone call?" [Audio available here] Clinton dodged the question by simply…
Kyle Drennen
November 18th, 2011 9:39 AM

Media Mash: End of Occupy Wall Street Edition

Media silence greeted video of an Occupy Wall Street protester vowing to burn New York City to the ground and toss Molotov cocktails into a Macy's department store, yet there was "non-stop media coverage" of the alleged, but never proven, use of the N-word at one Tea Party rally, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell noted last night on Fox News Channel's Hannity. "Look at the violence you're…
NB Staff
November 18th, 2011 8:40 AM

Obama's '57 States' Gaffe Finally Makes the New York Times News Page

A day after Times Watch noted that the New York Times virtually ignored Obama’s supposedly “famous”  “57 states” gaffe during the 2008 campaign, reporter Michael Shear rectified that omission, albeit in a story on gaffe-prone GOP candidates, "Flubs Rubbing Some Republicans the Wrong Way," in Wednesday's paper.
Clay Waters
November 18th, 2011 7:58 AM

Joe Scarborough Talks to NewsBusters About Being MSNBC's Lone Conserva

As the lone conservative host on the nation's most liberal news network, Joe Scarborough is used to taking heat from folks on both sides of the political aisle. Despite NewsBusters at times being one of his program's critics, the host of MSNBC's Morning Joe spent over an hour with us on the phone Thursday discussing his show, how the media have been covering recent events like the Republican…
Noel Sheppard
November 18th, 2011 2:48 AM

Maxine Waters' 'That's Life' Reax to OWS Deaths, Violence, and Crime I

This one's utterly predictable, but still needs to be noted. As Edwin Mora at CNS News reported on Wednesday, California Congresswoman Maxine Waters, after a Congressional Progressive Caucus-sponsored event at the Capitol, “when asked to comment ... about the deaths and crimes that have occurred around Occupy protests being held across the country, … said 'that’s life and it happens.'" What's…
Tom Blumer
November 17th, 2011 11:22 PM