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Good Riddance to Bad Blather

Adios, Tom Brokaw!

12/1/04
Anybody watch the special 2-hour Tom Brokaw Retrospective this past Friday night? Me neither. But today we celebrate the reason for the big deal: the retirement of Tom Brokaw after 20 years anchoring NBC Nightly News. Tonight's broadcast will be his last sit-down at the anchor desk!

Brokaw saw himself has unbiased: "The idea that we would set out, consciously or unconsciously, to put some kind of ideological framework over what we are doing is nonsense." (on C-SPAN's Washington Journal, 5/25/01) While it is true that Brokaw may have spent less time in the crosshairs of media bias activists than his colleagues, Dan Rather and Peter Jennings, he certainly spread liberal bias in his own fashion.

Tom Brokaw frequently managed to fly under the radar of media bias activists, not by being less biased, but by being less outrageous than his brethren at the other broadcast networks. Nonetheless, his name came up often enough that we were pleased to learn recently that he found the activists' activities incredibly irritating.

We are also delighted at the prospect of Brokaw's retirement and urge him not to let the screen door hit him on the backside. Email Brokaw your retirement wishes.

How About That Report?

11/16/04
We continue to await the report on the investigation into CBS's Memogate. Public outcry prompted CBS to appoint in outside panel to look into Dan Rather's phoney document scandal. Former Attorney General Richard Thornburgh and former Associated Press executive Louis Boccardi were given the task of figuring out what went wrong way back on September 22.

A couple weeks later, CBS boss Les Moonves commented, "Obviously, it should be done probably after the election is over, so that it doesn’t affect what is going on."

This did nothing but aggravate media bias watchers! Since it took no time at all for ordinary citizens to uncover the gaping holes in the memo story, why should it take the special panel more than a couple weeks? And why would CBS News be concerned about affecting the election with the panel's findings when they set out to affect the election with the phoney documents story in the first place? And furthermore, if CBS is afraid the panel's findings will affect the election, then the report must exonerate President Bush, otherwise, they would just let it fly!

Now the election has been over for nearly two weeks. Deep hypnosis has been discovered to cure Presidential Election Selection Trauma (PEST). A producer has been fired from CBS for the unpardonable sin of interupting CSI with announcement of Arafat's death. Undoubtedly, the Thornburgh-Boccardi report is just gathering dust. Why not brush it off and let the public know what it says? What's it going to take? An email campaign?

Email Moonves here.

The following items are taken from the MRC's Weekly Worst, 10/19/04.

Bob's Liberal Debate Questons

CBS' Bob Schieffer, moderator of the third and final presidential debate, pitched softballs recycled from DNC talking points to Kerry. Meanwhile, President Bush received the loaded questions like, "You said that if Congress would vote to extend the ban on assault weapons, that you'd sign the legislation. But you did nothing to encourage the Congress to extend it. Why not?" Read more here. Email Schieffer here.

Trusting the Viet Cong More than U.S. Vets

Ted Koppel and the Nightline gang featured former Viet Cong guerrilla fighters as "witnesses" with "no particular ax to grind." (Just ignore the communist government minder monitoring all interviews.) Koppel was thrilled that they were able to verify a portion of John Kerry's war tales - sort of. Koppel was not thrilled when first-time guest Swift boat vet John O'Neill pointed out that Kerry's picture hangs in the communists' war museum and is so honored as someone "who helped them win the war." Read more here. Email Koppel here.

Gorby's Anti-Bush Broadside

Tom Brokaw on NBC Nightly News featured former Soviet dictator Mikhail Gorbachev's assessment of President Bush's handling of Iraq: "This is a blow struck at international law, at the United Nations, at relations and alliance and partnership between the United States and other countries. And, of course, public opinion was ignored." This from the man who, in 1990, sent tanks into Lithuania to crush dissent. Read more here. Email Brokaw here.

The following items are taken from the MRC's Weekly Worst, 10/12/04.

ABC Catches Kerry Fever

ABC News is misrepresenting their own poll again! An ABC News/Washington Post poll released 10/4/04 had Bush over Kerry 51 to 46 percent. ABC World News Tonight anchor Peter Jennings used the allotted air time to declare "the latest ABC News poll indicates a new enthusiasm for the Kerry campaign." Only after announcing Kerry's 8 point increase in favorability with likely voters. He admitted only at the end of the story that President Bush held a 5 point lead. Viewers would have to go to ABCNews.com to discover that Bush is ahead of Kerry "by substantial margins in trust to handle terrorism and Iraq, as well as in personal attributes including strong leadership, honesty and trust-worthiness, making the country safer and qualifications to serve as Commander in Chief." Read more here. Email Jennings here.

CBS Tilts Against Bush & Cheney

CBS' political preferences were on full display. Prior to the Vice Presidential candidates debate on 10/6/04, reporter Jim Axelrod opined that "Mr. Cheney, the administration's attack dog, may be the least popular U.S. politician since Richard Nixon." Following that debate Bob Schieffer predictably announced, :"The arguments that Vice President Cheney was making tonight clearly did not take." Not to be outdone, White House correspondent John Roberts portrayed President Bush as the Boogie Man: "Is it the sort of thing that, you know, little kids are going to jump behind the couch and hide from him?" Read more here and here. Email Axelrod, Schieffer, and Roberts here.

The following items are taken from the MRC's Weekly Worst, 10/5/04.

CBS's Dodgy Draft Story

CBS tried to pass off an urban legend based on email rumors as a legitimate news story. Reporter Richard Schlesinger portrayed anti-draft activist Beverly Cocco as a "regular Republican mom" who would have to vote for a Democrat to protect her teenage sons from the draft. Glaring problem: the bill in congress to restart the draft was entirely backed by Democrats. Read more here, here and here. Write to Schlesinger here.

Abe Lincoln vs. King Henry V

Prior to the first presidential debate, Newsweek's Jon Meacham likened John Kerry to Abraham Lincoln. "Is that statesmanship, or is that a flip-flop?" Following the debate he compared President Bush to King Henry V. "(M)onarchical...almost an element of self-pity." Read more here. Write Meacham here.

The following items are taken from the MRC's Weekly Worst, 9/28/04.

CBS: Bush Is The Real Flip-Flopper

Reporter Jim Axelrod, on CBS Evening News, 9/23/04, strains to show that President Bush, not Kerry, is the real flip-flopper. John Roberts tried the same stunt a couple weeks ago. I guess it didn't take! One might suspect that their source for these stories was the DNC. Read more here and here. Email Axelrod and Roberts here.

Dismissing Dan's Dupery

Some of Dan Rather's fellow travelers don't think his involvement in Memogate is any big deal. Tom Brokaw of NBC: "I think he was really trying to get a big story about the President's National Guard service, and they got stung by some bad documents, and it's too bad." Helen Thomas of White House press pool fame: "To me, the real issue is why doesn't the President tell us the truth?" CNN's Aaron Brown goes all out with sympathy for Dan: "Some partisans...will see willful deception on the part of CBS," but "smarter and more reasoned heads know better." Of course, we are all dying to know if the dog really ate little Danny's homework. Read more here, here, and here. Email Tom Brokaw here. Email Helen Thomas here. Email Aaron Brown here.

The following items are taken from the MRC's Weekly Worst, 9/21/04.

Blame the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy

Dan Rather moans and groans to the New York Observer's Joe Hagan that "(p)owerful and extremely well-financed forces are concentrating on questions about the documents because they can't deny the fundamental truth of the story." And he huffed and puffed to the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz, "I don't back down. I don't cave when the pressure gets too great from these partisan political ideological forces." Yet another victim of the VRWC. So sad. Read more here and here. Write to Dan Rather here.

It's Bush's Fault We Unfairly Smeared Him

Come to find out it was the responsibility of the White House to authenticate CBS's forged documents! At least that's what 60 Minutes Executive Producer Josh Howard would like us to believe. In truth the White House saw the documents just a few hours before CBS when on the air with them and did not authenticate them. Read more here. Write to Josh Howard here.

The following items are taken from the MRC's Weekly Worst, 9/14/04.

First the Smear...

CBS's Dan Rather began displayed his partisan loyalty with his attempt to smear the president using suspicious documents. On the CBS Evening News and on 60 Minutes II of Wednesday, 9/8/04, these apparent forgeries were used to "prove" that, as a 1st Lieutenant in the Texas Air National Guard, President George W. Bush did not serve honorably. Read more here and here. Email Rather here.

...Then the Stonewall

By Friday, 9/10/04, the bogus documents were largely discredited and CBS's credibility was in the toilet. Rather's response was to spend 6 minutes during CBS Evening News trying to convince viewers that the assumptions based on the false documents were still true even if the documents were forgeries. He complained, "Today, on the Internet and elsewhere, some people, including many who are partisan political operatives, concentrated not on the key questions of the overall story, but on the documents that were part of the support of the story." Read more here. Email Rather here.

Heads I Win, Tails You Lose

ABC's George Stephanopoulos, on Friday morning, 9/10/04, reasoned that if the Democrats are looking bad, it must be the fault of the Republicans. "A lot of Democrats suspect this was a set up, something set up by Republicans." Sounds like a childish inability to accept personal responsibility to me. Read more here. Email Stephanopoulos here.

Don't Be Conned by Moderate Speakers

NBC's Tom Brokaw warns viewers not to be fooled by moderate speakers at the GOP convention such as John McCain. Read more here. Email Brokaw here.

Republicans Against Women

Again, Tom Brokaw! He had this to say to Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME): "You have no place in this convention. The platform does not seem to speak to a lot of women in this country. It's anti-abortion, it does not expand stem cell research. On other social issues in which women have some interest, for example, gay unions, [it] is formally opposed to that." Read more here. Email Brokaw here.

Disdaining Wild-Eyed Zell

Time magazine's Joe Klein and ABC's George Stephanoloulos thought the best way to deal with Zell Miller was to try to convince viewers that he has gone 'round the bend! Read more here and here. Email Klein here. Email Stephanopoulos here.

Not Compassionate

CBS's John Roberts takes issue with the term "compassionate conservative". Read more here. Email Roberts here.

The following are from the Media Research Center's Worst of the Week, 8/31/2004

Touting Kerry's Defenders, Hiding His Critics.

CBS Evening News demonstrates their willingness to cover John Kerry's you-know-what! Read more here. Email your comments.

Also sleazy...

NBC: "The Poor Live with Less."

Although Census statistics indicate that the poverty level in Ohio is below the national average and did not change in 2003, NBC's Ron Allen wrings his hands over "increasing" poverty in this important battleground state. Read more here. Email your comments.