Poverty Rate Falls, But CBS Stresses Rise in Number Without Health Ins

August 29th, 2007 9:00 AM
The Census Bureau announced a drop in the poverty rate, but NBC and, especially CBS, on Tuesday night managed to turn the good news into bad by emphasizing an increase in the number of Americans without health insurance while ABC, in contrast, portrayed the decrease in poverty as good news. “A bright spot of economic news today,” fill-in ABC anchor Kate Snow announced, “the percentage of…

CBS: Rising and Falling Home Prices Bad for the Economy

August 29th, 2007 8:33 AM
No matter what the housing market does – whether it trends upward or trends downward – either way, it is bad for economy. That’s the CBS take on the economy anyway. “The prices of homes are falling and there is more evidence tonight that those counting on their houses as their nest eggs may be in trouble,” said Russ Mitchell on the August 26 “Evening News.”

Ana Marie Cox on Couric Middle-East Trip: 'Maybe She Needs Rugs

August 29th, 2007 6:54 AM
Update 15:34 (see bottom of post): Cox explains her rug joke. I had great expectations when Ana Marie Cox turned up on the "Morning Joe" panel, confident the tart-tongued former Wonkette would produce plenty of grist for our NB mill. But over the course of the week, Cox has been disappointingly subdued, leaving it to the congenial Tamron Hall to produce our headlines. Perhaps Ana Marie's new…

CBS Uses 'Craig Scandal' to Exhibit How 'GOP Is Already Under a Cloud

August 28th, 2007 9:41 PM
In contrast to the morning shows which exploited the arrest of Republican Senator Larry Craig, on charges stemming from alleged lewd conduct in an airport men's room, as a chance to tar the “right wing,” “conservatives” and the “GOP,” with the notable exception of CBS, the broadcast network evening shows -- which all led Tuesday night with Craig -- refrained from using the matter to malign…

WashPost Book Reviewer Decried How Author 'Publicly Caned' Katie Couri

August 28th, 2007 6:00 PM
The Washington Post on Tuesday published a book review of Ed Klein’s critical Katie Couric biography by reviewer Louis Bayard, who found the entire exercise of writing a Katie book distasteful, unnecessary, and sexist: “You may also wonder if the same book would have been written about a male broadcaster,” Bayard argued early on. He suggested Klein was a female-bashing brute:

Did Feminist Katie Couric Exploit Men to Climb the Ladder to Fame and

August 27th, 2007 3:38 PM
On Friday, National Review writer Myrna Blyth unwrapped some of the nuggets in the forthcoming Ed Klein biography of Katie Couric, the one the Katie camp is trying to squash, in very Hillaryesque fashion, as "old news." [Klein appeared Monday night on FNC's Hannity & Colmes.] Before she kindly noted that the MRC has piles and piles of examples of Katie's liberal bias, Blyth dished Klein's…

CBS: Bay State Health Insurance Mandate and State Subsidy Don't Go Far

August 27th, 2007 1:44 AM
A year and a half after the CBS Evening News celebrated the then-upcoming Massachusetts mandate requiring everyone to buy health insurance and the state subsidizing it for those with lower incomes -- “Imagine this: Virtually everyone guaranteed health insurance coverage. It's happening in one state, and it could be a model for the rest” -- Friday's newscast found it has come up short. Anchor…

Modern Day ‘Saving Private Ryan’ in Iraq

August 26th, 2007 12:02 PM
A family in Clovis, California, which is near Fresno, has sadly become the modern day version of the Ryans, real-life brothers depicted in Steven Spielberg's acclaimed film "Saving Private Ryan" wherein all but one died serving his country in World War II. For the Hubbards, Nathan, the second of three brothers serving in Iraq, died Wednesday in a helicopter accident in the northern part of that…

Warner Allows NBC to Again Hail Iraq 'Turning Point,' CBS: 'Major Blow

August 23rd, 2007 8:59 PM
Republican Senator John Warner's call for the withdrawal of 5,000 troops from Iraq by Christmas was trumpeted by the broadcast network evening shows Thursday night: CBS's Katie Couric touted a “major blow tonight to President Bush's Iraq policy” and ABC's Martha Raddatz saw a “stunning announcement that could have a powerful effect on the war” as the NBC Nightly News, for the fifth time in two…

Nets Declare Bush's Vietnam Lesson Hypocritical and Invalid, Only ABC

August 22nd, 2007 10:01 PM
The broadcast network evening news shows on Wednesday night pounced on President Bush's reminder that the U.S. pullout from Vietnam led to millions being killed, as all three shows featured historians to discredit Bush's parallel to what may happen if the U.S. withdraws from Iraq, and NBC portrayed Bush as hypocritical for raising Vietnam after earlier rejecting comparisons to Iraq as a Vietnam-…

Nets Ignore Lowest Congressional Approval Rating in 33 Years

August 22nd, 2007 5:41 PM
If George W. Bush's approval rating hit a low point for any president in 33 years, do you think the network evening news programs would have reported it? Maybe as the lead story, right? Well, a new Gallup poll was released on Tuesday stating that the approval rating for Congress tied the lowest point since Gallup began tracking such a thing, and none of the broadcasts networks thought it was…

Media Scaring Countrywide Customers Although Signals Point to its Surv

August 17th, 2007 4:01 PM

Couric Astounded Rumsfeld's Resignation Letter Omitted Words 'Iraq' an

August 15th, 2007 8:31 PM
Katie Couric found it newsworthy Wednesday night that former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's resignation letter from nine months ago did not include the words “war” or “Iraq.” Picking up on a story from the Associated Press on how “the deadly and much-criticized conflict that eventually drummed him out of office comes up only in vague references” in the November 6, 2006 letter the AP…

ABC Blames Karl Rove for Swift Boat Ads, All Nets Scold Him for Plame

August 14th, 2007 1:47 AM
Reporting on the resignation of presidential political adviser Karl Rove, ABC's World News on Monday night absurdly blamed Karl Rove for the ads from Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and featured John Kerry's condemnation of Rove as all three broadcast network evening shows castigated Rove for his criticism of how Democrats want to coddle terrorists and highlighted his “leaking” of Valerie Plame's…