Today

NBC's Matt Lauer, on Tuesday's Today show, invited on soon to be House Majority Leader Eric Cantor to discuss today's meeting of Republican congressional leaders with Barack Obama, and in the process tried to force Cantor to move in the President's direction on raising taxes. The Today co-anchor opened the conversation by wondering if Cantor was going into the meeting in the mood for "…

On Monday's Today show, NBC's Matt Lauer downplayed the criminal factor in the release of hundreds of thousands of classified diplomatic communiques by WikiLeaks, twice labeling the website as only a "messenger" for the documents. Both Lauer and NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell insisted the State Department "crossed a line" by ordering diplomats to spy on foreign diplomats at the United…

A painful period he'd rather forget? Asked to name the person who preceded Meredith Vieira as his Today sidekick, Matt Lauer declined to mention Katie Couric, claiming "there was no one ever.  No one came before Meredith." Matt's convenient case of amnesia came in response to a question from Robin Hall, who is celebrating his 10th and last year as executive producer of Macy's…

NBC correspondent Norah O'Donnell hyped Sarah Palin's criticism of her liberal opponents on Tuesday's Today show, stating that the former governor "rips the heart out of some of her opponents" in her new book. O'Donnell stated that Palin, "in very personal terms, also questions the President's [Obama's] patriotism, concluding he has 'a stark lack of faith in the American people.'" The…

Those Tea Partiers – is there anything in this nation they can’t spoil? They’ve already gummed up the president’s agenda with their rallies and signs and voting. Now, they’re trying to ruin “Dancing with the Stars!” So says the left and many in the media agree. Now that newly resurgent conservatives have handed them a crushing mid-term defeat, liberals are seeing nefarious Tea Party plots…

On Monday's Newsroom, CNN's Kyra Phillips gave a false impression of Pope Benedict XVI's recent comments about condoms. While the Pope stated that condom use "can be a first step...on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed," Phillips stated that the pontiff "says condoms are okay sometimes." Refreshingly, Monday's Today show on NBC accurately covered Benedict's…

On Monday, all three network morning show's eagerly highlighted former First Lady Barbara Bush voicing opposition to a Sarah Palin presidential run while suggesting the former Alaska governor has spent too much time in the public eye. As Harry Smith proclaimed at the top of CBS's Early Show: "It's all Palin all the time. But could the most famous family from Alaska be on the verge of…

NBC's Today on on Monday offered the most sympathetic take on the growing outrage over invasive pat downs being conducted at airports by the Transportation Security Administration. While ABC highlighted "outrage" and CBS observed how some find the procedures "violating," Today host Matt Lauer worried about the government "caving" on the policy. All three morning shows interviewed TSA…

NBC's Matt Lauer, on Thursday's Today show, invited on Alaskan Senator Lisa Murkowski to applaud her presumptive write-in ballot win over Republican candidate Joe Miller and asked if she would now "stand up against" Republicans "who may feel that the only way for them to succeed" is for Barack Obama to fail. After Lauer went through the perfunctory congratulations, he asked the candidate who…

Of the three morning shows on Thursday, only CBS left out any mention of Barack Obama or Attorney General Eric Holder while reporting on the nearly complete acquittal of a former Guantanamo Bay detainee. Early Show news anchor Erica Hill asserted that "the verdict is in for the first Guantanamo detainee to be tried in a civilian court and it is being seen by some as a serious setback for the…

Tuesday's evening news broadcasts and Wednesday's morning shows allowed a scant four and a half minutes of coverage to the conviction of powerful Democrat Charlie Rangel over ethics charges. In comparison, these same programs devoted 121 minutes to exhaustively examining every aspect of the announcement that Prince William is getting married, a disparity of 30 to one. NBC's Today featured the…

It's the kind of a description that causes a double take.

Bobby Jindal, on Monday's Today show, slammed the Obama administration for its slow response to the BP oil spill off the coast of Lousiana, charging that: "It seemed like the federal government was disconnected from the facts on the ground." However Today co-anchor offered excuses for the President as he queried the Louisiana Republican Governor: "In fairness though, Governor, in those early…

Norah O'Donnell, on Monday's Today, couldn't resist taking a couple of shots at Sarah Palin, in her review of the former Alaska governor's TLC reality show, as the NBC correspondent trumpeted a recent Gallup poll that "More than half of Americans, 52 percent view her negatively, making her the most divisive of all of the potential candidates in the 2012 Republican field." O'Donnell also aired a…