Free Republic

Four billboard trucks bearing the message “Stop the Liberal Bias, Tell the Truth!” began circling the Manhattan headquarters of ABC, CBS, NBC, and the New York Times on Friday. The trucks will do so for eight hours every weekday for the next four weeks as part of a campaign run by the Media Research Center, a watchdog group that analyzes the media for liberal bias. Similar trucks also are operating in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, passing the offices of the broadcast networks, the Washington Post, CNN, the Newseum, the National Press Club and Politico, and ads about the campaign...

On Wednesday night's NBC Nightly News, correspondent Andrea Mitchell filed a story in which she turned to Bush administration critic and former National Security Council member Clint Leverett, "who quit in protest before the war," to contribute a soundbite charging that the Bush administration "had decided to fight back" against Joseph Wilson in response to his criticism of the Iraq invasion. Mitchell also, without challenge, relayed Wilson's contention that his trip to Niger discredited the possibility that Iraq had tried to acquire uranium from Niger, as she merely passed on that he concluded "it wasn't true." Absent was the argument...

The paradox of the year is why so many Americans tell pollsters they feel bad about an economy that's been so good, with solid job growth and corporate profits, rising wages and home prices, and a huge decline in the budget deficit. Perhaps one reason is because the media keep saying the economy stinks. That's the conclusion of... the Media Research Center, which finds that so far this year 62% of the news stories on the Big Three TV networks have portrayed the U.S. economy in negative fashion. The "negative full length TV news stories on the economy outnumbered positive...

Media’s bad news bears deliver negative news 62 percent of the time despite economic expansion.* Economic news heavily negative: Coverage of economic news on the three broadcast networks was negative 62 percent of the time, despite ongoing good news of more jobs, low unemployment and economic growth. * Good news undermined: Even when good news made it to viewers, journalists undermined it with bad news 45 percent of the time. * Negative stories given more air time: Good news stories were relegated to briefs roughly two thirds of the time. Negative news received longer stories and outnumbered positive stories by...

Media harp on PBS political controversy but ignore massive government funding of public broadcasting. PBS advocate Bill Moyers is against subsidies – when they go to the wrong people. But the public broadcasting that airs the show he once hosted rides a $7 billion-plus wave of government funding – a fact that media outlets have omitted in recent coverage of budget wrangling. “Favored corporations get their contracts, subsidies and offshore loopholes,” Moyers said in a political rant on “Now,” a weekly newsmagazine, on March 26, 2004. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helps fund Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), has been...

Why isn't TV news giving the Fannie Mae scandals the same level of coverage that it gave to Enron? Fannie Mae, the government-sponsored mortgage association, has been battling a mounting scandal since last year. It has accounting errors of about $11 billion. That's more than 19 times larger than Enron's $567 million error. Fannie faces a Justice Department inquiry, an SEC investigation and an Office of Federal Housing Enterprise complaint. The mess has caused the departure of CEO Franklin Raines and several other top executives. And Fannie Mae stock has dropped roughly 30 percent, from nearly $80 a share to...

The chutzpah of CBS and ABC. On Sunday night, both decried how the Sinclair Broadcast Group has told its owned and operated televisions stations to run an anti-Kerry documentary, Stolen Honor: Wounds that Never Heal. On the CBS Evening News, reporter Kelly Cobiella noted how "Sinclair has given the lion's share of its political contributions to Republican candidates. This year, the company's CEO wrote out the largest personal check allowed by law to President Bush's re-election campaign." ABC anchor Terry Moran stressed how "Democrats decry this move as a political smear and yellow journalism" before Geoff Morrell relayed how "Sinclair's...

The broadcast network morning shows put a much higher priority Thursday morning on hyping the Jerry Killian memos as damaging to President Bush than they did Friday morning to exploring the possibility that the memos were forged. At the top of Thursday's Good Morning America, Charles Gibson trumpeted: "New questions about President Bush's military record. Did family friends pull strings? Did he get special treatment? And did he disobey orders?" While GMA gave more time Friday than CBS and NBC combined to the forgery possibility, George Stephanopoulos gave credence to how "a lot of Democrats suspect this was a set...

...Dan Rather ...was one of several journalists who spoke of the vice president's speech as "the first appearance of a polarizing figure at the convention." ...Cheney wasn't the only one of last night's speakers targeted for demonization. Democratic Sen. Zell Miller, the first keynote speaker from an opposing party, was widely ridiculed as what Lauer (who first wondered if Miller "is really a Democrat") called "a Democrat in name only" — a sentiment with which Tim Russert agreed. ABC's Peter Jennings last night listened to Miller complain about his own party's leftward drift, then asked him: "If you feel so...

CBS News on Friday released another finding from its poll taken May 20-23 and though it found a huge lead for President Bush over John Kerry amongst veterans, 54 to 40 percent, a group Kerry is courting by touting his combat veteran status, CBS managed to turn the poll into a negative for Bush, not Kerry. "While a new CBS News poll finds [Bush] still enjoys their overwhelming support," reporter John Roberts in Normandy stressed how "55 percent now say the Iraq war wasn't worth the cost and some veterans, whose backing of the President is still firm, complain he...

Rush Limbaugh and Sam Donaldson made surprise appearances at the MRC's "DisHonors Awards: Roasting the Most Outrageously Biased Liberal Reporters of 2003," which were presented on Thursday night, March 18, before an audience of about 850 at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C. Following the presentation of the awards, as MRC President L. Brent Bozell III made closing remarks and thanked those who made the evening possible, he was interrupted by ABC News veteran Sam Donaldson, who bound on stage in mock anger, railing at Bozell and the MRC for the attack on the news media. Bozell soon resumed...

NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw can't escape the MRC -- and that annoys him. In an interview in the latest edition of the Columbia Journalism Review magazine, Brokaw denied he's guilty of any liberal bias and seemed to be referring to the MRC's CyberAlert as he called the constant drumbeat of criticism from the MRC "a little wearying" since the MRC's "fine legal points" are "everywhere every day." In the interview, Jane Hall, a regular panelist on FNC's Fox Newswatch, an assistant professor at American University's School of Communication and a former Los Angeles Times reporter, raised the MRC: "The...

More Runners-Up Quotes in MRC's Awards for the Worst Reporting      Monday's CyberAlert featured the winners and Tuesday’s the first runners-up. So today, the second and third runners-up quotes in the MRC's “Best Notable Quotables of 2003: The Sixteenth Annual Awards for the Year’s Worst Reporting.”      For the winners, see item #4 in the December 29 CyberAlert: www.mediaresearch.org      For the first runners-up, see the December 30 CyberAlert: www.mediaresearch.org      And for the names of the 46 judges, see item #5 in the December 29 CyberAlert: www.mediaresearch.org      Or, you can find it all on the MRC Web site...

***Media Research Center Media Appearance Alert*** 3:35pm EDT, Thursday June 26, 2003 MRC's DisHonors Awards on C-SPAN This Saturday Night > This Saturday evening C-SPAN will air the MRC's "DisHonors Awards: Roasting the Most Outrageously Biased Liberal Reporters of 2002." The C-SPAN schedule lists the awards (which they designate as lasting an hour and 15 minutes) as running twice on Saturday night, June 28. By time zone: EDT: 9:10pm and 12:40am CDT: 8:10pm and 11:40pm MDT: 7:10pm and 10:40pm PDT: 6:10pm and 9:40pm Those times could change and C-SPAN times are approximate, so tune in early. To check C-SPAN's Saturday...

Ashamed of the Red, White & Blue Award First Place Phil Donahue: “Let me tell you what is impressive. You’re not wearing a flag. Well, I don’t want to damn you with my praise, but I say hip-hip-hooray for that, and I think you gave the right answer when you spoke at Northwestern University....” Tom Brokaw: “Right. I said, you know, I wear a flag in my heart, but I think if you wear a flag, it’s a suggestion somehow that you’re endorsing what the administration is doing at the time. And I don’t think journalists ought to be wearing...