Warner Allows NBC to Again Hail Iraq 'Turning Point,' CBS: 'Major Blow
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
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
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…
NBC Nightly News Joins Newsweek in Smearing Global Warming 'Deniers
Only days after Newsweek was embarrassed when its own columnist, Robert Samuelson, excoriated the magazine for a “fundamentally misleading” and “highly contrived” cover story meant to defame the global warming “denial machine,” Wednesday's NBC Nightly News aired an equally distorted story which smeared “deniers,” a term no doubt meant to conjure a similarity to dishonorable Holocaust deniers.…
ABC Blames Karl Rove for Swift Boat Ads, All Nets Scold Him for Plame
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…
The NewsBusters Weekly Recap: August 4 to
Those Nutty ChristiansOn Tuesday’s "Nightline," co-anchor Martin Bashir filed a report on businessman Tom Monaghan, founder of a Catholic university in Florida and a community that will attempt to embrace traditional Christian values. Bashir regurgitated a two-year-old criticism that the town has "been described as a Catholic Jonestown, a kind of Catholic Iran, where individual rights and…
Another Hot Summer, Another Chance for Nets to Blame 'Man-Made Global
NBC has apparently abandoned any doubt about the formulation that bad or hot weather in the summer proves man-made global warming since just two years after NBC Nightly News pointed out how “three of the five warmest summers on record were in the 1930s,” Tuesday's newscast showcased a UN report to contend “extreme weather” and an August heat wave demonstrates man-made global warming. Back on the…
Dow Down 281 Points Big News Friday, Dow Up 287 Points Not So Newswort
A pronounced example of how bad news is news and good news is much less newsworthy: On Friday night, ABC and NBC teased full stories on the 281 point plunge that day in the Dow Jones average, but on Monday, after the Dow rebounded by five points greater than Friday's loss in the biggest one-day gain in five years, the networks limited coverage to a few seconds. “The stock market stumbles again…
TV Anchors Make Millions, But Still Attack the Rich
Let them eat cake – because we are too.Our TV network media personalities really want you to believe they can relate to the average American. After all, when you’re a high-minded soldier fighting on the side of the proletariat, it’s important to be a victim of the economic injustices you bring to light, right?Not so fast. It turns out some of the most prominent journalists are doing quite well,…
NBC Uses Housing Slump as Scapegoat
If all else fails – blame the housing market. It works for NBC.This time a struggling housing market is the reason auto sales are struggling. The week before, it was responsible for the drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Good thing “Nightly News” is focusing on global warming solutions or the network might even try to pin that on the housing market.“Even Toyota sales fell and blamed a…