Free Republic

NBC News political director Chuck Todd on Thursday labeled the new NBC miniseries about Hillary Rodham Clinton a “total nightmare” for the network’s news division — adding another voice to the increasing backlash against the project. “This is why this miniseries is a total nightmare for NBC News,” Todd said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “We know there’s this giant firewall. We know that we have nothing to do with it. We know that we’d love probably to be as critical or whatever it is going to be, if it comes out.” Todd added, though, that regardless of whether the Clintons...

WASHINGTON (AP) — John Palmer, a veteran reporter for NBC News who covered wars and Washington over a career that spanned 40 years, died Saturday after a brief illness at a Washington hospital.

Days after George Zimmerman’s July 13 acquittal in the killing of Trayvon Martin, Zimmerman’s lawyer in civil court, James Beasley, has confirmed that he will move to resume his client's libel suit against NBC. “We are going to get the libel case restarted,” Beasley wrote in a July 15 email to iMediaEthics. Beasley is currently requesting a lift on the stay on the defamation case, requested by NBC in February while awaiting the outcome of Zimmerman’s criminal case. In December 2012, Zimmerman filed a defamation lawsuit against NBC for misrepresenting the record of his call with a 911 responder when...

The one inconvenient fact that DUmmies and other liberals are reluctant to confront about the Zimmerman case is that NBC News FRAUDULENTLY edited Zimmerman's 911 tape to make him sound like a racist. As a result, Zimmerman is now suing them for defamation. There is no doubt that he will win but the only question is how much will he get. $10 million? $20 million? More? I just hope any settlement (and NBC News will be anxious to settle OUT of court) includes a stipulation that Brian Williams MUST issue an apology to Zimmerman at the top of his...

Last night’s not-guilty verdict in the George Zimmerman trial will enable the neighborhood-watch volunteer to resume his case against NBC News for the mis-editing of his widely distributed call to police. Back in December, Zimmerman sued NBC Universal Media for defamation over the botched editing, which depicted him as a hardened racial profiler.

George Zimmerman's not guilty verdict adds a new wrinkle to a separate legal case in the Florida courts: His defamation suit against NBC. In December, Zimmerman sued NBC, reporter Ron Allen and two other news personnel on claims that the network's edits of his 911 call to police were manipulated to make it sound like he was a racist. The Florida judge in Zimmerman's case, Debra Nelson, put the defamation case on hold pending the result of the criminal trial. Jody Armour, professor at USC's Gould School of Law, said that although it is "possible" that Zimmerman's claim against the...

As of Friday morning, NBC News broadcasts had completely ignored an important scoop from the network's own national investigative correspondent Michael Isikoff that Attorney General Eric Holder personally approved the Justice Department's aggressive investigation of Fox News reporter James Rosen. Meanwhile, both CBS News and FNC provided on-air coverage of the new development. On Thursday's Nightly News, White House correspondent Peter Alexander passed up the perfect opportunity to mention the breaking news as he wrapped up a report on President Obama's afternoon national security speech: "Also today, on the topic of national security leaks, the President said that he's asked...

Call it Luke Russert's version of "bitter clingers" on steroids . . . In Russert's world, there are apparently two kinds of Republican congressmen. The "smart" ones—to be found on the Ways & Means Committee—and the others, whom he calls the "God, guns and guts people," presumably in reference to this book. Russert made his statement on today's Morning Joe, responding to Joe Scarborough's question as to whether Republicans would overplay their hand over the current scandals. According to Russert, Republicans chose well in holding today's hearing of IRS officials before the Ways & Means Committee because that's where the...

On Thursday's NBC Today, in a desperate attempt to deflect from the scandals engulfing the Obama administration, co-host Savannah Guthrie wondered: "I read a headline yesterday that said Republicans see blood in the water. That they see a president who's very vulnerable politically. Is there a danger that they will overreach?" [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump] Chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd agreed with the slanted premise: "There is. I mean, that's what happened to Republicans in 1998 with Bill Clinton. And if all of Congress is focusing on hearings to do scandals, the...

Nowhere is [the result of mainstream media bias] more obvious than in the relentless imploding viewership of once financial media titan, CNBC, which lately has become a sad, one-sided caricature of its once informative self, whose only agenda is to get the most marginal Joe Sixpack to dump his hard-earned cash into 100x P/E stocks, and where according to data from Nielsen Media Research, the total and demographic (25-54) viewership during the prime time segment (9:30am - 5:00 pm) just tumbled to 216K and 40K - the lowest recorded viewership since mid 2005 and sliding. So why the relentless collapse...

These are well-known companies that advertised on the NBC Nightly News tonight. Please consider contacting some or all of them to complain about the lack of coverage of the trial. It will make a difference! And if anyone can confirm that NBC didn't mention the Gosnell trial tonight, as there was about 15 seconds that I missed trying to see advertisers on the other networks, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks. NBC Nightly News: Fidelity United Healthcare Capital One Xarelto (missed the drug maker) Mass Mutual Alka Seltzer Infiniti Dr. Scholls GE CBS: Miracle Gro ABC: Merck Chrysler/Dodge

NBC doesn’t want to deal with George Zimmerman’s libel suit. In a Feb. 20 filing in the case, NBC Universal Media LLC asks a Florida circuit court to stay the case until the conclusion of Zimmerman’s June trial for second-degree murder of Trayvon Martin. --snip-- To recap Zimmerman’s case against NBC News: On the night that he shot Martin, Zimmerman called 911 and narrated his pursuit of the teenager in his gated community in Sanford, Fla. A March 27 edition of the “Today” show abridged the 911 tape, as follows: Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good....

Press: As if media bias weren't troublesome enough, the ascent of President Obama's top strategist to a plum job at NBC creates an even bigger issue: that of the political establishment becoming the press. Where does it end? In a way, the hiring of David Axelrod as "senior political analyst" providing commentary at NBC seems like a fool's errand from a business standpoint. After all, the White House senior adviser has pretty much been giving NBC and other big media outlets commentary for free during the Obama administration, if the slavish pro-Obama media bias, as well as secretive media-political collaborations...

As stranded Carnival Cruise passengers began finally disembarking in Mobile, Alabama, late Thursday evening, MSNBC had NBC News correspondent Mark Potter on the scene to speak with them. One young lady during her over three minute interview tried to cite a Bible verse that helped her get through the ordeal, but Potter pulled his microphone away and quickly ended the discussion (video follows with transcript and commentary):

The New York Times spins it this way: The longest-serving president of any of the three network news divisions, Steve Capus of NBC News, stepped down from his position on Friday, six months after Comcast restructured its news units in a way that diminished his authority. Exactly how voluntary was this “stepping down”? John Nolte points to the scandal-plagued tenure of Capus at NBC News: 1. During last year’s presidential election, Andrea Mitchell was caught manufacturing a Romney gaffe where none existed. 2. During last year’s GOP primary, Ed Schultz edited video of Texas Governor Rick Perry to make him...

Ending a tenure marked by the costly decline of the 'Today' show, the failure of the newsmagazine 'Rock Center' and an erosion of journalistic values, Steve Capus Friday resigned as president of NBC News after almost eight years on the job. While NBC once had the number one morning and evening news shows on his watch, the last two years have been a story of failure for Capus and the network's news division. SNIP Capus also spent millions on one of the sorriest excuses of a newsmagazine in TV history, Brian Williams' "Rock Center," which has been a rock solid...

NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams joined Jimmy Fallon Monday in another "Slow Jam the News" segment on NBC's Late Night. This time the subject was the fight over the debt ceiling with the target of course being Republicans who were repeatedly hit with sexually-charged attacks (video follows with transcript and commentary): BRIAN WILLIAMS: Hello, I'm Brian Williams of NBC Nightly News and host of NBC's Rock Center, and I too, would like to slow jam this news. JIMMY FALLON, HOST: Hit me three times! WILLIAMS: Less than a month after signing a fiscal cliff deal and narrowly averting a...

The Detroit News recently reported that union membership has declined five-tenths of a percentage point – 11.8 to 11.3 – in the workforce. “Total union membership fell by about 400,000 workers to 14.4 million. Teachers unions were among the hardest hit, with the ranks of public school teachers and educators falling sharply,” it noted. The thinning union ranks are blamed on state budget cuts which have resulted job losses for teachers and other government sector employees, EAGnews.org found. The AP report did not mention that some teachers are choosing to walk away from their union. But that’s exactly what’s...

Wrapping up a report on Wednesday's NBC Today about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's upcoming congressional testimony on the Benghazi terrorist attack, chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell sympathetically observed: "It will be a grueling day, first in the Senate, then in the House. Not how the Secretary of State had planned to wind up what is widely viewed as a stellar term as the nation's top diplomat." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump] At the top of the segment, Mitchell seemed to lament that Clinton would have to endure such questioning after recent health...

Ah, the masses. How they loved President Obama's inaugural speech. And how Andrea Mitchell, being "up there," loved looking out over them. She was "very moved." Yes, on Morning Joe today, NBC correspondent Mitchell not only said that she was "very moved, being up there . . . looking out over the masses," but that she found the speech "uplifting," and that it was "a bigger moment that a lot of people originally gave it credit for." View the video here.