As Terrorist Threats Force Shutdown of U.S. Embassies, Networks Barely

August 2nd, 2013 12:13 PM
Late Thursday, news broke of the State Department ordering numerous U.S. embassies across the Middle East closed on Sunday, August 4 due to terror threats from Al Qaeda. While the Big Three network evening newscasts all covered the important development that night, not one of them made any mention of the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack on the consulate in Benghazi, the perpetrators of which…

CBS Dubiously Implies McCain Supports Hillary Over Rand Paul For Presi

August 1st, 2013 3:26 PM
This just in: John McCain supports Hillary Clinton over Rand Paul for president in 2016! That was the message that CBS’s Gayle King implied during a news brief on Thursday’s CBS This Morning. King reported on a recent interview in The New Republic in which Sen. McCain (R-Ariz.) was asked who he would vote for in 2016 if former Secretary of State Clinton faced Sen. Paul (R-Ky.) in the general…

CNN Drops Its Own Scoop on Benghazi; Networks Fail to Even Pick It Up

August 1st, 2013 2:44 PM
[UPDATED BELOW] CNN's Arwa Damon scored an exclusive interview with a suspect in the Benghazi attacks, yet CNN chose to air it only once. Aside from a brief mention of it on Thursday morning, the network has dropped its own scoop that it broke on 5 p.m. Wednesday on The Situation Room. None of the three networks mentioned the story on their Wednesday evening news casts, and only CBS talked…

Nets Minimize Filner Scandal Coverage, Won't ID Him As A Democrat

July 31st, 2013 6:10 PM
ABC and CBS both failed to point out San Diego Mayor Bob Filner's Democratic party affiliation on their Wednesday morning newscasts. Good Morning America devoted just one 17-second news brief to the ongoing Filner scandal. CBS This Morning didn't do much better, with two news briefs on the former congressman. NBC's Today didn't set aside any air time to the controversy. The NBC morning show…

Networks Silent about Manning’s ‘Gay Soldier’ Defense

July 31st, 2013 4:26 PM
Bradley Manning must be terribly lonely. After all, how many gay men have made news the last few years without being celebrated in the media for their gayness? And a gay man who also “struggles with issues of gender identity” can pretty much write his own contract with MSNBC. But the media, and the broadcast networks especially, are oddly reticent about the sexual orientation and confusion of…

ABC Spins Obama's 'Grand Bargin': Why Would GOP 'Reject a Tax Cut for

July 31st, 2013 12:50 PM
  Although most of the evening newscasts on Tuesday and morning shows on Wednesday ignored Barack Obama's plan for a "grand bargain," ABC's Good Morning America covered the latest budget move and wondered why Republicans would "reject a tax cut for corporations." Reporter Jim Avila offered an incomplete description of the President's latest plan, citing personal animus on the part of the…

CBS Bizarrely Wonders if Pope Francis is 'Breaking With The Vatican

July 30th, 2013 5:28 PM
Monday's CBS Evening News offered the usual biased coverage of religion, and specifically, the Catholic Church, as it reported on Pope Francis' widely misrepresented remarks on homosexuals. Dean Reynolds' only talking head was a former priest who apparently "quit the priesthood...after he felt the Church intended to purge gays", and even wondered if the Pope was throwing out Catholic teaching…

ABC, CBS, NBC All Fail To ID Weiner, Filner as Democrats on Saturday A

July 30th, 2013 2:12 PM
All three major networks ran full-length stories on their Saturday morning shows on the sex scandals involving San Diego Mayor Bob Filner and New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner. However, none of the networks directly identified either politician as a Democrat. ABC’s Saturday edition of Good Morning America ran separate stories on each of the two men. Their two-and-a-half minute…

CBS Concedes ObamaCare May Be 'Tough Sell' Even in Blue Oregon

July 29th, 2013 6:36 PM
On Sunday's CBS Evening News, Anna Werner surprisingly acknowledged that ObamaCare may be a "tough sell" even among the left-leaning population of Oregon. Werner's report on a hokey multi-million dollar campaign trying to get young people to sign up for the West Coast state's health care marketplace came three days after CBS reported that the controversial law's approval rating is at an all-…

Networks That Yawn Over IRS Scandal Find Time for 50-Year-Old JFK Vaca

July 29th, 2013 5:34 PM
The same networks that have been minimizing and ignoring the growing scandal at the Internal Revenue Service all found time to fawn over 50-year-old footage of President Kennedy vacationing with family. A World News graphic on Sunday night thrilled, "Return to Camelot." Anchor David Muir breathlessly narrated the video to cloying, emotional music provided by ABC: "President Kennedy teeing off…

‘Fetus’ Means Death, Abortion in Media Talk

July 29th, 2013 9:54 AM
A couple definitions from the media’s unofficial abortion lexicon: Baby (n) any infant, pre- or postnatal, whose existence is welcome and not seen as “punishment” for the mother. Often used to gush over celebrity offspring. Example: “The world is impatiently waiting for the Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton, to give birth the baby that will be heir to the British throne. Fetus (n) any…

Bob Schieffer: 'Huma Doing Hillary No Favors

July 28th, 2013 4:13 PM
As NewsBusters has been reporting, the media these days seem to see everything through the prism of what helps and hinders Hillary Clinton's path to the White House. On CBS's Face the Nation Sunday, Bob Schieffer said Huma Abedin, by standing by her disgraced husband Anthony Weiner, was "doing Hillary Clinton no favors whatsoever if Hillary Clinton is planning to run for president" (video…

Norah 'We Shouldn't Editorialize' O'Donnell Regularly Editorializes<p>

July 26th, 2013 12:21 PM
Norah O'Donnell had a memory lapse on Friday's CBS This Morning, as she expressed her disgust over San Diego Mayor Bob Filner's alleged sexual harassment of women. O'Donnell exclaimed, "I know we shouldn't editorialize, but this behaving badly – it's gone overboard at this point." [audio available here; video below the jump] The anchor apparently isn't self-aware, because she has regularly…

On Media Mash, Brent Bozell Slams Media's Effusive Coverage of Obama's

July 26th, 2013 10:53 AM

On FNC's Hannity last night, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell teed off on the media's effusive reaction to President Obama's remarks last Friday about race and the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman case. Various journalists had described the President's speech as "extraordinary," "beautiful," and "a symphony." Bozell had a different word: "dishonest." (Video and partial transcript below the…