Chicago Tribune’s 'The Swamp' Blogger Likens Palin’s Endorsement o

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has been out of office over a month and there are still those working at major media outlets that just can't get over their obsessions with dissecting everything the former GOP vice-presidential nominee does. Case and point - Mark Silva, a blogger for the Chicago Tribune's "The Swamp," in an Aug. 26 post took it upon himself to try to rationalize why Palin would…
Jeff Poor

NBC Exploits Kennedy to Push ObamaCare: 'National Sorrow Has Created P

Proffering how “national sorrow has created political momentum before,” Wednesday's NBC Nightly News devoted a story to the hope of Democrats that Senator Ted Kennedy's passing will propel ObamaCare to victory. Noting how Kennedy was “passionate” about more government in health care, from Hyannis anchor Brian Williams proposed “ironically, the fact that he did not live long enough to see a…
Brent Baker

Rush, Beck Warn Obama Administration Trying to Bring Country to Its Kn

They warned back in 2008 what might happen if Barack Obama was elected president, and according to conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh and Fox News Channel host Glenn Beck, a lot of bad stuff is unfolding right before our eyes. Limbaugh appeared on Beck's Aug. 26 program to discuss the threat of the federal government attempting to regulate the media. He explained the president's policy…
Jeff Poor

Brian Williams: In Lieu of Flowers for Ted, Pass Health Care Reform

NBC's Brian Williams, during NBC News' live coverage of the President's remarks about the passing of Ted Kennedy on Wednesday, cited what sounded like a spam e-mail rallying support for health care reform, as a way to remember the Democratic Senator. Quoting from his in-box Williams suggested: "In lieu of flowers, pass health care reform." Responding to a question from "Today" co-host Ann Curry…
Geoffrey Dickens

Chris Matthews Designates Obama as a Kennedy: 'Barack Is Now the Last

MSNBC host Chris Matthews appeared three times on Wednesday’s Today show to lionize Sen. Ted Kennedy, and twice he promoted Barack Obama as the "last brother" of the Kennedy political tradition. He tried to clarify a little in his appearance in the 10 am hour: "I don’t mean that in an ethnic sense or a black sense. I mean a brother of the Kennedy tradition. And I think he’s the new brother, not…
Tim Graham

Newsweek Editor Plays Psychiatrist – Says Health Care Opponents Suff

Don't like ObamaCare? Well, more than likely - you're suffering from some sort of psychological delusion according to Newsweek Senior Editor and self-declared psychiatrist Sharon Begley. Begley, in a piece posted on Newsweek's Web site on Aug. 25, theorized that the widespread opposition to President Barack Obama's health care reform is from any legitimate reason, but instead it exists mostly…
Jeff Poor

Newsweek Editor Plays Psychiatrist -- Links Health Care Opponents to S

Magazine's Sharon Begley rationalizes a large part of opposition to ObamaCare is from a distortion of 'mental processes.'
Jeff Poor

Shuster: Kennedy 'Didn't Dabble In Small Personal Attacks

"Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back alley abortions, blacks would sit in segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of million of…
Mark Finkelstein

Media Ignore Reid, Baucus' Co-op Comparisons to Public Option, Exclude

The threat of a government-run public option plan in health care legislation was frightening enough to spur thousands of people to attend town hall meetings across the country and voice their dissent, sometimes angrily. Now legislators and the national media are talking about a possible "compromise" that could replace the public option with health care co-ops. Conservatives are concerned that…
Julia A. Seymour

Health Care Co-ops: Just another Public Option

National media ignore Reid, Baucus' co-op comparisons to government plan and similarities to HillaryCare.
Julia A. Seymour

Newsweek's Evan Thomas Lionizes Kennedy As Liberal Who Always 'Kept th

"Edward Kennedy, perhaps more than any United States senator in the past half century, cared about the poor and dispossessed. Though he was relentlessly mocked by the right as a tax-and-spend liberal, he kept the faith."  Thus wrote Newsweek's Evan Thomas of the late Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy today in an obituary that acknowledged and in places excused the late senator's sins even as it remembered…
Ken Shepherd

AP, LA Times Headlines Lionize Ted Kennedy

The Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times trumpeted the legacy of Ted Kennedy on Wednesday by running headlines which used quotes from notables about the deceased senator without quotation marks. The AP’s report by Glen Johnson and Philip Elliott heralded the President’s superlative about Kennedy without stating it was Mr. Obama’s words: “Obama mourns Kennedy, greatest senator of our time.”…
Matthew Balan

NYT's Ted Kennedy Obit Avoids the Jesse Helms Treatment

News of Sen. Ted Kennedy's death late Tuesday night didn't make the Wednesday print edition of the New York Times, but a 6,000-word obituary by John Broder was posted on nytimes.com this morning: "Edward Kennedy, Senate Stalwart, Dies." Broder's obituary left room for the lowlights of Kennedy's career, including Mary Jo Kopechne's death at Chappaquiddick and Kennedy's ruthless personal attack on…
Clay Waters

ABC’s Terry Moran: ‘Happy Warrior’ Kennedy Brought ‘Joy’; Ig

ABC’s Terry Moran on Wednesday spun Ted Kennedy’s political career as one of a "happy warrior" who should be looked to for direction in "these bitter times." However, it’s hard to square this description of Kennedy with the vitriolic speech the Senator made in 1987 condemning Robert Bork’s nomination to the Supreme Court. Reporting on Kennedy’s death soon after it was announced, Moran noted that…
Scott Whitlock