ABC

The controversy continues over Chaz Bono's participation in ABC's upcoming season of "Dancing with the Stars." The response to the transgender contestant's role in a once-family friendly show has left ABC with an ongoing PR problem. Chaz Bono is considered a "star" for one reason: Using his status as the child of Cher and Sony Bono to make a very public display of gender identity change,…

Good Morning America on Tuesday skipped any mention of James Hoffa's call for war against the Tea Party and the union leader's exhortation to "take these son[s] of bitches out." The ABC program was the only network evening or morning show to ignore the heated rhetoric entirely. All three evening newscasts on Monday and CBS's Early Show and NBC's Today offered brief references to Hoffa's…

The major news networks love 9/11 stories. But there's one 9/11 story they won't touch: the exclusion of any religious participation from the Ground Zero memorial service during the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Mayor Bloomberg has vetoed the presence of religious speakers at the site of Ground Zero during the memorial ceremony on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks,…

St. Louis Tea Party co-founder Dana Loesch was one of Christiane Amanpour's roundtable guests on Sunday's "This Week." At the end of the lengthy segment, Loesch, who is also editor of Big Journalism, offered an interesting view about next year's elections (video follows with transcript and commentary):

It appears one should never say in Christiane Amanpour's presence Barack Obama isn't ideologically flexible. When former Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Holtz-Eakin did so on ABC's "This Week" Sunday, the host pushed back, "Do you think that’s true that he hasn’t shown flexibility since he's, he’s sort of come completely to the Republican tenor of the debate?" (video follows with…

If it's Sunday, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman must be "saying something really stupid or outrageous." On ABC's "This Week," the Nobel laureate told host Christiane Amanpour, "If Obama called for endorsing motherhood, the Republicans in the House would oppose it" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

The Labor Department reported Friday that for the first time since 1945 - needless to say a long, long time ago - the economy produced exactly zero jobs in the month of August. Despite the history, the tremendously disappointing numbers, and the President speaking before a joint session of Congress next week about this very issue, ABC's World News actually made this its fourth story - yes, I…

The NBC and ABC morning shows on Friday indicated a growing impatience with not knowing Sarah Palin's presidential plans. NBC's Chuck Todd declared of the Labor Day holiday, "I think one thing about Sarah Palin is that this is her last weekend to cry wolf, essentially." Over on Good Morning America, George Stephanopoulos talked to reporter John Berman and insisted, "But, as you point out,…

The network news divisions just never stop making deals to promote the Kennedy family and the omnipresent Kennedy mythology and mystique. Katherine Fung at The Huffington Post reports that ABC will air a two-hour special on September 13 promoting interviews with Jackie Kennedy recorded months after the JFK assassination with liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.,  a major figure in Kennedy…

Former Democratic operative turned journalist George Stephanopoulos on Thursday attempted to spin the botched scheduling of a proposed Barack Obama speech to Congress as, generically, "politicians behaving badly." Talking to his friend (and colleague from the Clinton White House) James Carville, Stephanopoulos framed the issue: "But, who could have predicted the fight over the timing of the…

On Wednesday evening, the NBC Nightly News devoted a segment to a recent study involving the World Health Organization asserting that infant mortality in the United States has fallen behind 40 other countries, including Cuba. NBC's Today show and ABC's Good Morning America also mentioned the study briefly earlier the same day. NBC's Snyderman on Nightly News even seemed to hint that…

Good Morning America on Wednesday offered a short, odd little segment on Michele Bachmann's hairdo. Seeming to not know how to explain this phenomenon, GMA contributor Laura Spencer stuttered, "The- Well, let's just call it what it is. It's The Bachmann, people, and everybody wants it."   Spencer added a caveat in regard to Bachmann's ideology: "Now, whether or not her politics are your cup…

Representative Andre Carson's inflammatory attack on the Tea Party has yet to have receive any attention from the Big Three networks. As reported by Politico on Wednesday, Rep. Carson accused Tea Party-friendly members of Congress of wanting to bring back Jim Crow and went so far to accuse his colleagues of wanting to bring back lynching: "Some of them...would love to see you and me...hanging…

In the days leading up to Hurricane Irene's march through the Northeast,  journalists repeatedly suggested that the storm was yet more evidence of climate change. "The scale of Hurricane Irene, which could cause more extensive damage along the Eastern Seaboard than any storm in decades, is reviving an old question: are hurricanes getting worse because of human-induced climate change?" asked…