Media Business

Back in September 2008, MSNBC's Chris Matthews floated a specious allegation that then-Governor Sarah Palin had ties to an advocate of Alaskan secession named Joe Vogler. Although the charge was roundly discredited, it was one of the many early attempts to smear Palin as a wacky extremist. Two years later, it appears at least one writer for a liberal magazine thinks Alaskan secession would be a…

While Newsweek's David Graham is hard at work defending President Obama's summertime leisure -- "A Short History of Presidential Vacation Outrage" -- by insisting that the press corps always complains about any president's vacation habits, it's instructive that he failed to indict his own magazine. "War on terrorism stalled, economy on precipice, time for a month on the Crawford ranch."…

On Thursday, instead of showing the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, the network's Washington DC affiliate, WUSA-TV, decided to continue with live storm coverage. The last time the CBS broadcast was preempted by local coverage occurred during the massive winter blizzards, which buried the region in a few feet of snow. The Evening News has consistently ranked third among the network evening…

On last night's 'O'Reilly Factor,' Fox Business Network reporter Charlie Gasparino claimed that during his time at CNBC, General Electric Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt suggested to senior CNBC staff that they were being too hard on President Obama.Gasparino did not say that it became official CNBC policy to tone down criticism of the president. But he claimed that "the question of whether they…

From the Department Of People In Glass Houses . . . Early in his MSNBC show this evening, Ed Schultz mocked Karl Rove's performance in filling in for Rush Limbaugh today.  In particular, Schultz slammed Rove for his brief problem in providing the show's call-in number.  But later in the show, Ed himself ran head-first into a rhetorical roadblock, stumbling badly when it came to pronouncing…

There’s something oddly funny about the cluelessness of liberal media companies when their ratings fall or their subscriptions collapse. They just refuse to admit, even consider that the business problem could be (at least in part) their own incessant liberal agitating. Instead, they seem to double down and make things even worse.ABC’s Sunday show “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” could…

Managing Editor's Note: NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell issued the following statement about The Washington Post Company selling Newsweek to the guy from RoboCop Sidney Harman, for a grand total of one dollar: There’s something entirely believable about the Newsweek sale.  A left-winger pretending to be centrist sold it to another left-winger pretending to be centrist. Newsweek is a…

Managing Editor's Note: What follows is an open letter from NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell to Washington Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli about the controversial [now defunct] e-mail listserv JournoList, founded and operated by the Post's Ezra Klein.The JournoList scandal is getting worse every day and The Washington Post is at the center of it. Blogger Ezra Klein ran the operation and…

Editor's Note: For the list of NewsBusters T-shirt contest winners, skip to the end of this post.As we approach our 5th anniversary at NewsBusters, our celebration would not be complete without a recap of our best posts. It was a tough call, but we came up with the top 25, broken down evenly into five categories of five each. We call it our Five-for-Five. Each Friday through August 13 we'll…

Appearing on the Fox News Channel "Hannity" program last night, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell tackled the media's bewilderment that Obama's legislative successes aren't translating into healthy job approval numbers ahead of the upcoming November midterm congressional election. "Yes, [President Obama is] getting his legislative agenda accomplished, the problem is, this is a socialist…

My colleagues Brad Wilmouth and Lachlan Markay have catalogued how Fox News hosts played no role in the forced resignation of former USDA bureaucrat Shirley Sherrod over perceived racist remarks.But why let the truth get in the way of a good screed? Just ask Newsweek's Jonathan Alter, who published a postmortem yesterday to the magazine's The Gaggle blog on "[h]ow the administration mishandled a…

Managing Editor's Note:  NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell today reprimanded members of the press in light of the recently exposed e-mails from the now-defunct JournoList that show a blatant, deliberate campaign to smear conservatives. That statement is published below. Click here for more background on JournoList. The revelation of these e-mails simply proves that we have been right all along…

Jonathan Strong of the Daily Caller has more shocking e-mails from liberal journalists today. He starts with an NPR producer who admits flaming hatred for Rush Limbaugh: If you were in the presence of a man having a heart attack, how would you respond? As he clutched his chest in desperation and pain, would you call 911? Would you try to save him from dying? Of course you would.But if that man…

The Daily Caller has another scoop on the leftist JournoList e-mails today, recalling when liberal scribes all wanted the Jeremiah Wright story to be dead and buried in the spring of 2008. Jonathan Strong explained "Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over…