Cokie Whacks Weir on 'Who's Looking After Baby?' Question
August 30th, 2008 9:49 AM
You might have thought Bill Weir would have learned. Yesterday, CNN's John Roberts was roundly condemned for suggesting Sarah Palin might neglect her Down Syndrome baby while running for VP. But Weir, the weekend co-anchor of Good Morning America, posed a very similar question this morning. Coke Roberts, to her credit, called him out on it. Weir's guest during GMA's opening half-hour was McCain…
ABC’s ‘Good Morning America’ Revs Up Criticism of Car Rental Gas
August 29th, 2008 4:58 PM
If you break the terms of a contract, you should be expected to pay a penalty, right? Not according to ABC's "Good Morning America." "Good Morning America" criticized fees charged to customers who return rental cars without a full tank of gas - part of a standard car rental agreement. "The only thing more expensive than gassing up your car these days is not gassing up your rental car,"…
Networks Skip Liberal Labels For Dem Convention
August 29th, 2008 4:32 PM
While NBC's Matt Lauer took pains to label John McCain's vice presidential nominee a "staunch" and "stalwart" conservative on Friday, all three network morning shows almost entirely avoided any ideological descriptors for Senators Obama, Biden and the major liberal speakers during the just completed August 25 to 28 Democratic National Convention. Some of the individuals at the convention included…
Morning Shows All Hail Obama’s ‘Fiery,’ ‘Historic’ Speech
August 29th, 2008 12:20 PM
After each of the first three nights of the Democratic convention, network news reporters have offered enthusiastically positive reviews, and Friday morning’s coverage of Barack Obama’s acceptance address made it a clean sweep. CBS Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith, the only morning show host still in Denver, said he felt the earth moving. “This place rumbled....The stadium was just so alive, and…
Couric, Williams Back Obama’s Economic ‘Turmoil’ By Ignoring Pos
August 29th, 2008 10:38 AM
As my colleague Brent Baker noted last night, the August 28 CBS "Evening News" and NBC "Nightly News" broadcasts completely ignored the Commerce Department's upward revision of second quarter gross domestic product growth. The department announced August 28 the economy grew at 3.3 percent in the second quarter of 2008, up from initial reports of 1.9 percent. The revised number exceeded…
TV Journalists Relieved Obama 'Masterpiece' Took on McCain
August 29th, 2008 5:48 AM
Television journalists were nearly uniformly enthralled with Barack Obama's Thursday night acceptance speech, relieved he showed the toughness to take on John McCain directly, unlike, in their world view, all too-soft past Democratic nominees. Only FNC offered a contrarian view or mentioned the word “liberal” while David Gergen on CNN trumpeted the address as a “symphony” and a “masterpiece” with…
ABC's Moran: Obama's Parents Are Both Men
August 28th, 2008 7:22 PM
The ultimate objective in journalism is to deliver fresh information to the audience, to break heretofore unshattered stories. Last night, ABC's Terry Moran did exactly that. To get there, you must first wade through an extraordinary amount of Moran-Goo, as he slathers it liberally all over his reporting of the official nomination vote. But this is hardly groundbreaking. What comes next is.…
Another Night, Another Round of Cheers for the Democrats
August 28th, 2008 12:49 PM
ABC’s Good Morning America and CBS’s Early Show led the praise for the third night of the Democratic convention, with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos enthralled by how well it was going for Democrats. “I think every night in this convention has built on the one that came before,” he exclaimed Thursday morning, adding: “The speeches have gotten better every night.”[Check here and here for a re-cap of…
Elite Media Give Big Bucks to Gay Journalist Group
August 28th, 2008 12:19 PM
Rarely do the media put their institutional political bias on public display, but this past weekend, America's news industry titans left no doubt that they're fully behind one of the nation's most radical cultural and political movements. ABC, AP, CBS, CNN, Fox, NBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the corporate owners of USA Today, the Miami Herald, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution…
Denver Post: ABC Producer Arrested Photographing Democratic Donors
August 27th, 2008 7:19 PM
The Denver Post is reporting that "[a]n ABC News producer was arrested Wednesday outside the Brown Palace Hotel as he attempted to chronicle attendees at a private breakfast held by a Democratic Party campaign committee."In an article filed in the late afternoon on August 27, Post television critic Joanne Ostrow noted that the network insists they weren't breaking the law:ABC said in a statement…
Nets Gush: Hillary ‘Aced’ It; a 'Perfect' Convention Speech
August 27th, 2008 1:19 PM
All three broadcast morning shows hailed Hillary Clinton’s convention speech on Wednesday, as ABC’s Diane Sawyer saw Clinton “bringing down the house,” while George Stephanopoulos declared that “she aced it. I think she's gone farther than any losing candidate has ever gone in a convention like this.”Sawyer gushed: “If her candidacy put those 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling, her speech…