PBS

Barack Obama has taken a few soft-soap interviews on the PBS NewsHour, so anchor Judy Woodruff didn't want to say he was sell Obamacare in less than dignified forums -- like prank interviews with the schlub from "The Hangover" movies. Pseudoconservative analyst David Brooks and liberal Mark Shields typically agreed that Obama has oodles of dignity and cannot be mocked. Brooks said only if…

Leave it to PBS to take a local controversy and turn it into a symbol of the class war that is supposedly plaguing this country. On Tuesday’s NewsHour, the taxpayer-subsidized network raised a stink over so-called Google buses that carry San Francisco residents to their jobs at high-tech companies 30 or 40 miles south of the city. [Video below. MP3 audio here.] Anchor Judy Woodruff drew the…

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman went on PBS’s Charlie Rose show Monday night and defended President Obama’s soft foreign policy approach to the crisis in Ukraine. [Video below. MP3 audio here.] Of that approach, which so far has consisted of sanctions against 11 Russian and Ukrainian officials, Friedman said:

PBS found a sly new way to promote ObamaCare on Monday’s NewsHour. It came as part of a feature story on nutrition for young mothers and their infants. Anchor Judy Woodruff introduced the story by talking about malnutrition in young children and the importance of proper nutrition for mothers, particularly young ones. This set up her selling point: “Starting in 2010, a program under the health…

An unsigned Tuesday article on Yahoo! News could have been mistaken as a press release for PBS's latest TV production attacking the Catholic Church. The unknown author hyped the Church's "horrible year" in 2012 "on many fronts, not just with mounting evidence of financial impropriety at the Vatican bank, but also with incidents of sexual abuse by clergy spreading to more than 20 countries and,…

A few weeks ago, PBS host Tavis Smiley got in some hot water for comments he made about Edward Snowden. On January 19, Smiley appeared as a guest on ABC’s This Week w/ George Stephanopoulos and argued that, “Edward Snowden might be on a postage stamp somewhere down the road.” Despite the controversy surrounding Smiley’s extreme comments, the PBS host took to his nightly program on February…

On Thursday’s PBS NewsHour, anchor Gwen Ifill fed the tired old stereotype that the Tea Party ruins everything. [Video below the break. MP3 audio here.] During a discussion about the nation’s political outlook for the coming year, Ifill posed this question to The Washington Post’s Michael Gerson:

David Remnick of The New Yorker showed up on PBS’s Charlie Rose Monday night to discuss his long, mostly sympathetic profile of Barack Obama from the January 27 issue of the magazine. Near the end of the interview, Rose focused in on the president’s reported desire to be “big.” The host wondered, “[W]hat's his definition of 'big,' and does he believe in his deep recesses of his own mind that…

Tavis Smiley is known for making extreme statements that make even his fellow liberals cringe in fear. Whether he is comparing the Tea Party to Jihad or saying Republicans only oppose ObamaCare because they hate the president, the PBS host never stops making inflammatory comments. Appearing on This Week w/ George Stephanopoulos on January 19, Smiley asserted that, “I think very quickly that…

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates has been facing criticism and scorn from some media members for having the audacity to mildly criticize President Obama and some administration officials while Obama is still in office. On Tuesday, Gates appeared on the PBS NewsHour to face another round of questioning about his newly released memoir. Midway through the interview, anchor Judy Woodruff…

On Thursday, the New York Times called for the Obama administration to enter into a plea bargain or offer clemency to National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden in order to bring him back to the United States. On PBS’s McLaughlin Group Friday, syndicated columnist Pat Buchanan observed during a discussion about this issue, “There is an inherent conflict of interest between journalists and…

On Thursday night’s edition, the PBS NewsHour held a discussion about President Obama’s prospects for making 2014 more successful than 2013. Of course, the panelists defined success as the president enacting more of his left-of-center agenda. Gerald Seib of The Wall Street Journal posed a “really interesting strategic choice” that he thought the White House had to make: [Video below. MP3…

On the December 30 edition of PBS’s Charlie Rose show former NBA great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar decried the state of America’s race relations as he claimed the country was “back sliding” in that area due to recent “Supreme Court decisions” and all the efforts to “suppress minority voters.” Invited on to promote his new children’s book “Sasquatch in the Paint,” the former Los Angeles Laker center…

On the final installment of PBS’s Inside Washington Friday, host Gordon Peterson asked his panelists who they thought would be elected president in 2016. Rather surprisingly, the Washington Post’s Colby King said, “Paul Ryan because the Democratic nominee will never be able to replicate what Barack Obama has done, never bring out that base” (video follows with commentary):