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Nov
05
2012

Schieffer's Nightmare World Didn't Look So Bad at the Time

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Electoral College map, 2000 presidential election (Wikipedia)

CBS's Bob Schieffer revealed his greatest fear on yesterday's Face the Nation (11/4/12): Let me just say, David Gergen, I think the worst of all worlds would be if one of the candidates won the popular vote and other won the Electoral College. As the two made clear, they were talking about the possibility that Mitt Romney would win the popular vote and still not be president. But it must be nice to know that the most terrible thing that could ever happen has already happened–as it did in 2000, when Al Gore won the popular vote by 300,000 votes [...]

Filed Under: CBS, Election Tagged With: , ,
Nov
05
2012

Worst Media Moment on Hurricane Sandy?

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CNN's Erin Burnett (screengrab by mroach)

CNN reporter Erin Burnett's comment (10/29/12) that it was "kind of neat" to see New York City break its flooding record as the storm surge from Hurricane Sandy flooded Battery Park was bizarre, to say the very least: I just want to give everyone an update of where we are right now in terms of the record books. This is one for the record books. In terms of the storm surge here in Manhattan, Lower Manhattan where I am right now, almost a three-foot record, three feet. We're at 12.75 feet, as you can see, it's above my ankles now [...]

Filed Under: CBS, Climate Change, CNN, Election Tagged With: , ,
Oct
19
2012

CBS Libya 'Factcheck' Will Live in Infamy

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Franklin Roosevelt signing the declaration of war against Japan (National Archives)

CBS Evening News (10/17/12) provides another example of corporate media's through-the-looking-glass  media "factchecking" of the Libya exchange at the second Obama/Romney debate (FAIR Media Advisory, 10/18/12). CBS's Jan Crawford set up the issue this way: For weeks, Republicans have said the president's reluctance to call the attacks terrorism is a sign his administration doesn't have a competent national security policy. Last night, the president said he did call it an act of terror within 24 hours of the attacks. That is a new explanation, and it triggered a clash between the president, Romney and the debate moderator. Note how the [...]

Filed Under: Barack Obama, CBS, Election, Libya Tagged With: ,
Oct
16
2012

CBS Factchecks Romney's Tax Plan: Maybe, Who Knows?

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cbs-romney

Mitt Romney has a multi-trillion dollar tax cut plan that he says won't add to the deficit. How does that work? He won't say, other than to pledge that he'd close some loopholes and deductions, but that none of those would harm "middle-class" Americans. Analysts have argued that this is not mathematically possible. So how do you factcheck that? That was the task for CBS Evening News last night (10/15/12). And their answer seemed to boil down to: Well, maybe. CBS reporter Wyatt Andrews explained: "Romney argues that lower rates will stimulate the economy and he is emphatic the middle-class [...]

Filed Under: CBS, Factchecking, Media Criticism, Mitt Romney, Taxes Tagged With: , ,
Aug
31
2012

Factchecking the Minnows and Letting the Whales Swim Away

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Mitt Romney at the RNC

In an attempted factcheck of Mitt Romney's acceptance speech at the Republican convention, AP's Calvin Woodward (8/30/12) takes on Romney's big laugh line: President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet.  My promise is to help you and your family. Woodward looked into it and found that, indeed, Obama had said something like that. But aren't the important factual questions here whether ocean levels actually are rising, and if so whether it's possible to do anything about them? (The answers are "yes" and "yes," as it turns out.) The Washington Post [...]

Filed Under: AP, CBS, Climate Change, Factchecking, Mitt Romney, Taxes, Washington Post Tagged With: , , ,
Aug
08
2012

Harry Reid, the New Joe McCarthy

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Senator Harry Reid started a whole lot of trouble on the campaign trail when he told some Huffington Post reporters that he'd heard that Mitt Romney paid no taxes. As in zero. For an entire decade. Now there are reasons to be skeptical of Reid's account. As Dana Milbank pointed out, Reid's record does not inspire confidence. He says he got this scoop in a phone call with a Bain Capital investor. There is no other documentation or information to substantiate the allegation. Of course, Romney could settle the issue by releasing his tax returns– which is presumably why Reid [...]

Filed Under: ABC, CBS, Media Criticism, Mitt Romney, Taxes, Washington Post Tagged With: , , , , ,
Jul
11
2012

Fast & Furious Conspiracies: Not Just at CBS

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The "Fast & Furious" scandal has been a staple of right-wing media, where it is either evidence of a White House dodging accountability (a  legitimate argument) or a plot to create chaos in order to pass more stringent gun laws (a bizarre and nonsensical conspiracy theory). But a recent Fortune investigation (6/27/12) showed that the central claim at the heart of the scandal is flawed. Was there an ATF program to "walk" guns into Mexico in order to catch drug lords on the other side of the border? No. The problem, as the story documented, was that prosecutors were reluctant [...]

Filed Under: ABC, CBS, magazines, Washington Post Tagged With: , , ,
Jul
03
2012

Corporate Media Untells the ALEC Story

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Independent media outlets have basically owned the ALEC story over the past few years. The American Legislative Exchange Council is a corporate-sponsored "bill mill" that works with state legislatures to pass the kinds of laws corporations want. Thanks to investigations in Mother Jones, the Nation, Extra! and continued attention from the likes of AlterNet and ThinkProgress, a group that prefers to work in the shadows has been exposed to a harsh spotlight. And the group doing much of the hard work to expose ALEC–the Center for Media & Democracy–has pushed many of the group's corporate backers to bail out. So [...]

Filed Under: CBS, Election, Environment, Taxes Tagged With: , , ,
Jun
29
2012

The Race to Be First to Be Wrong at the Supreme Court

By 23 Comments

In corporate media there is always a race to be first to report a breaking story seconds before your competitors. It means nothing to the rest of the world–we're talking a matter of seconds, much of the time–but it's a point of pride in the news business to be first. Being right is more important, by several miles, and on that score a few prominent outlets failed spectacularly yesterday at the Supreme Court, telling viewers that the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act had been struck down. The prime offenders on cable were Fox News (photo by @jasonkeath)  and [...]

Filed Under: CBS, CNN, Fox News, Healthcare, NBC Tagged With: ,
May
23
2012

Give Friedman a Chance–to Rewrite His Own History

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Thomas Friedman on Face the Nation this past Sunday (5/20/12): You know, I believed from the beginning we had four choices in Afghanistan, Bob: lose early, lose late, lose big, or lose small. And, you know, my hope was that we would lose small and early. Thomas Friedman in the New York Times, November 2, 2001: A month into the war in Afghanistan, the hand-wringing has already begun over how long this might last. Let's all take a deep breath and repeat after me: Give war a chance.  

Filed Under: Afghanistan, CBS, New York Times, War/Military Tagged With:
May
08
2012

Media, Austerity and Bad Medicine

By 30 Comments

The election results in Greece and France sent a clearer message about austerity: Voters don't like it. That sentiment isn't hard to fathom; massive spending cuts and pay cuts aren't fixing the problems in their economies–they're making things worse. Media coverage seems to be clearer these days about what the public thinks of austerity. But the assumption that austerity is mostly "good" still seems firmly in place. Like this Washington Post lead (5/7/12): Voters in France and Greece redrew Europe's political map Sunday in a powerful backlash against the German-led cure for the region's debt crisis: painful austerity. It's not [...]

Filed Under: CBS, Economy, Europe, New York Times, Washington Post Tagged With: , , , ,
Apr
19
2012

Now They Tell Us: Iran Didn't Actually Threaten to Wipe Israel Off the Map

By 45 Comments

Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor acknowledged on Al Jazeera English (4/14/12) that Iranian leaders have never called for Israel to be "wiped" off the map. Meridor agreed with interviewer Teymoor Nabili's suggestion that the supposed remarks were never actually made; Iranian leaders, Meridor said, come basically ideologically, religiously, with the statement that Israel is an unnatural creature, it will not survive. They didn't say "we'll wipe it out," you are right, but [that] it will not survive, it is a cancerous tumor, it should be removed. Hostile words, to be sure, but not the menacing threat endlessly reported in [...]

Filed Under: CBS, CNN, Iran, Israel/Palestine, New York Times, Washington Post Tagged With: , , , , ,
Feb
28
2012

No Fracking Way, CBS Evening News

By 40 Comments

The February 23 CBS Evening News segment on hydraulic fracturing gas drilling, better known as fracking, revealed how journalists can cover a highly controversial subject by removing the controversy. The report started off with references to high gasoline prices; the implication, then, is that domestic gas drilling will help solve that problem. As anchor Scott Pelley kicked things off: President after president has called for energy independence for America, but somehow it never seems to happen. But Anna Werner talked to an oil man today who is predicting that it's coming, and in just a few years. That oil man [...]

Filed Under: CBS, Environment Tagged With: , ,
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