Free Republic

by Mark Finkelstein Is Neal Gabler jealous of Helen Thomas' status as a leading Bush media antagonist? You might think so, judging by the barbs Gabler aimed Thomas' way on this evening's Fox News Watch. In discussing Thomas' pointed exchange with President Bush during this past week's press conference, Gabler, whose sole regular media job would seem to be his weekly appearance on Fox News Watch, did claim that Thomas' question as to the president's motivation in invading Iraq was a good one. But Gabler prefaced that comment by gratuitously observing: "Helen has asked dumb questions in her time." Later,...

by Mark Finkelstein March 11, 2006 As has been well-documented by the Media Research Center, while MSMers are loathe to label anyone or anything 'liberal,' they don't hesitate to brand various entities or individuals 'conservative' or 'right-wing.' Well, folks, I believe we have a new world record in the category. In the course of discussing the case of Colorado teacher Jay Bennish, who compared President Bush to Hitler, liberal [there, I said it] Neal Gabler on tonight's Fox News Watch managed to utter the term 'right-wing' four times . . . in 14 seconds. Yes, I checked it by my...

by Mark Finkelstein March 4, 2006 And here we thought the MSM was biased against President Bush. Wrong! On this evening's Fox News Watch, reliable lefty Neal Gabler informed us that just the opposite is true. Turns out. . . the MSM has uncritically propagated an overly positive image of the president. Who knew? Gabler's shocking revelation came in the course of a discussion of the recent Katrina revisionism. In particular, News Watch aired footage from an ABC interview from this past week in which the president made this frank acknowledgement: "Here's the problem that happened in Katrina. There was...

What passes for a media watchdog show on Fox News has failed again. Discussing the new pro-homosexual propaganda film, Brokeback Mountain, Fox News Watch panelist Jane Hall declared that 10 percent of the U.S. population was gay. Host Eric Burns countered that it may be as low as 5 percent. They were both wrong, as another panelist, James Pinkerton, pointed out. He noted the real figure is 1 percent. It comes from census data. The higher 10 percent figure comes from the discredited work of Alfred Kinsey, who greatly overstated the amount of sexual perversion in the population because he...

Fox News Watch is a Sunday program about journalism. This weekend, it demonstrated how not to be a journalist. The star of this dreadful segment was Neil Gabler. Much of the discussion was on the coverage of the Iraq War. Gabler has frequently demonstrated his bias to the left on this program. This time, he was over the top. Twice in the course of this discussion he yelled, not merely said, “Iraq is a DISASTER. Get it? EVERYBODY gets it now.” Therefore, anyone who disagreed with his conclusion, whether a spokesman for the Administration, or even anyone on the program...

Fox News Watch is proving to be one of the most disappointing programs airing on the Fox News Channel. Purporting to be media critics, the show's panelists make accusations about the media that are themselves in dire need of correction. In a show during the presidential campaign, a panelist and "media writer" named Neal Gabler astonished the audience by claiming that a "secret email" proved that a New York Times reporter was actually biased against John Kerry. Despite repeated requests to provide the explosive evidence, he refused to do so. Host Eric Burns also refused to respond to several requests...

Ad features vets who claim Kerry "lied" to get Vietnam medals. But one accuser quickly recants, and other witnesses disagree. August 6, 2004 Modified: August 6, 2004 A group funded by the biggest Republican campaign donor in Texas began running an attack ad Aug. 5 in which former Swift Boat veterans claim Kerry lied to get one of his two decorations for bravery and two of his three purple hearts. However, one of the veterans who appears in the ad has already recanted his principal accusation against Kerry, in an interview with the Boston Globe Some other veterans who accuse...