NBC Nightly News

CBS and NBC on Tuesday night reached deep into a Washington Post story – specifically, the 20th paragraph of a 24-paragraph article – to pluck out a quote in order to demonstrate a “frustrated” President Barack Obama has been angry about the gulf oil spill. “A frustrated President Obama says ‘plug the damn hole,’” Katie Couric teased at the top of the CBS Evening News. She soon elaborated: …

ABC and NBC rushed to get stories onto the air Friday night delivering left-wing talking points against the new social studies curriculum guidelines passed by the Texas State Board of Education, as both portrayed conservative Christians as the enemies of accurate history. Reality wasn’t good enough for ABC, which framed its lead story around “Rewriting History?” and saw no liberals in the “big…

All three broadcast evening newscasts have repeatedly touted, as if it is a valid representation of national sentiment, the “boycott” of Arizona by liberal municipalities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles. But when the Arizona Corporation Commissioner on Tuesday made a tongue-in-cheek offer to help Los Angeles out in its boycott by shutting off the electricity flow, CBS and NBC were silent.…

Since Obama took office, there's been a leftward swing toward increased regulation. The news media have supported that tilt, generally failing to demand explanations for high profile failures of government regulators. From the financial crisis to the Gulf oil spill, a recent string of problems exposed serious failures of government regulators that are supposed to protect the public. But…

ABC, CBS and NBC all showcased a second grader's question to First Lady Michelle Obama, about her apparently illegal mother. The girl pleaded: “Barack Obama is taking everybody away that doesn't have papers,” but “my mom doesn't have papers.” ABC suggested it demonstrates the need for immigration “reform” as anchor Diane Sawyer proposed “a child's fear brings a new focus to the debate” since “the…

Another sycophantic book about President Barack Obama, another showcasing of it by NBC News. Five weeks after three NBC News shows featured David Remnick to promote 'The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama,' Friday's NBC Nightly News aired a first-person recitation, from Newsweek's Jonathan Alter, of a laudatory anecdote about Obama told to him by self-interested members of Obama's staff…

NBC News Political Director Chuck Todd seemed astonished by how a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll confirmed solid agreement with Arizona's immigration enforcement law – “a whopping 64 percent support the law,” Todd marveled, “and we read them the law verbatim exactly as it's been written” and still, he repeated, “64 percent approve of it.” NBC also treated as surprising the majority backing…

As the MRC’s Tim Graham documented yesterday, ABC and NBC's morning and evening newscasts have so far refused to tag Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan as a “liberal,” with CBS’s Jan Crawford offering the sole ideological label of the nominee on Monday's Evening News: “Her career has put her solidly on the left.”In contrast, all three networks made a major deal out of the last person nominated by…

Five weeks ago (covered at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), the Big Three Networks' combined evening news audiences dropped to below 20 million -- an audience about 5% less than what Matt Drudge in the summer of 2006 headlined as “TV’s Lowest Week.” Three weeks ago (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), their combined audience came in at 19.61 million, down over 12% from the previous year. For the week of…

In quite a contrast to the immediate tagging of the Bush and Obama Supreme Court nominees as “conservative” (and that includes Sonya Sotomayor), on Monday night ABC and NBC refrained from applying any ideological description to Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan while CBS snuck in one. CBS's Jan Crawford declared “her career has put her solidly on the left,” but contended “she will have…

NBC's "Saturday Night Live" last evening did a sketch wherein Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad complained about his press coverage."I have suffered, and continue to suffer, injustices at the hands of the United States government, which has unfairly accused me of crimes that I did not commit," began Shahzad played by Fred Armisen with help from translator Maya Rudolph."And worse, injustices at…

Liberal political pundits frequently remind Americans that words matter, which makes broadcast network reporters' coverage of Arizona's new crack down on illegal immigrants so appalling.   Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed a law on April 23 that would make it a misdemeanor for immigrants to not carry documentation proving they are in the country legally. The bill gave state law enforcement the…

On Friday night, NBC promoted leftist May Day protests against Arizona’s new immigration enforcement law while CBS, after a full week of coverage focused on outrage against it, finally bothered to get around to how murder and crime got the public behind it. Declaring Arizona is “at the center of a growing storm over its tough new immigration law,” NBC anchor Brian Williams touted: “Activists…

Given the contentious debate over the proper role of religion in American public life, you'd think an important Supreme Court ruling on the issue would be a big story to the network news. But the Court's April 28 finding regarding a cross on a World War I memorial in the Mojave Desert elicited a yawn from CBS's "Evening News," a 78-word report from NBC's "Nightly News," and a one-sided segment…