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Sep
28
2012

Romney's Latest Gaffe: Telling the Truth on Taxes

By 8 Comments
muir-abc-taxes

We're familiar with campaign reports that don't do enough factchecking. But here's a  strange one from ABC World News (9/25/12), which seems to be complaining that Mitt Romney departed from his usual misleading claims about how Obama's been raising your taxes. Pointing this out would be a good thing. The problem is that you have a hard time figuring out what the facts are, because the truth doesn't seem to be the primary concern of the segment. Here's what correspondent David Muir said: MUIR: Today, something from Romney about the President we haven't heard before. Romney has long argued the [...]

Filed Under: ABC, Election, Factchecking, Mitt Romney, NBC, Taxes Tagged With: ,
Sep
25
2012

Ted Koppel's Terrible Media Criticism

By 26 Comments
koppel

TV news veteran Ted Koppel has done two pieces on NBC's Rock Center that attempt to critique the partisanship of today's media system. But what the reports really illustrate is that some people aren't very good at playing media critic–especially when they feel obligated to suggest that "both sides" are equally at fault. Koppel's first report (9/13/12) looked at right and left watchdogs, "an industry out there on both sides monitoring and recording anything that could hurt the political opposition." That "industry" consists of the liberal  Media Matters for America and the right-wing Media Research Center. As Koppel explains, "You [...]

Filed Under: Media Criticism, NBC Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
Sep
20
2012

Quantifying 'Muslim Rage'

By 23 Comments
Newsweek's "Muslim Rage" cover

Sometimes very little can tell you a lot. Here's Brian Williams on NBC Nightly News, updating viewers on protests that are linked to that famous anti-Islamic video: Overseas tonight, new and deadly retribution from that amateur Internet film that's enraged much of the Muslim world. The "Muslim world" is, well, enormous–somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.5 billion people. A good question that doesn't get asked enough: How many Muslims are out protesting this video anyway? A helpful analysis comes from Dan Murphy at the Christian Science Monitor ("Is the Islamopocalypse Really Upon Us?," 9/17/12). He writes: While sensational headlines have [...]

Filed Under: Islamophobia, Media Criticism, NBC Tagged With: , ,
Sep
10
2012

Iran Coverage Offers Confusion Over Clarity

By 28 Comments
romney-gregory

On NBC's Meet the Press (9/9/12), Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and host David Gregory had a discussion about the failures of the Obama administration's foreign policy that included this:   ROMNEY: The president has not drawn us further away from a nuclear Iran. And in fact Iran is closer to having a weapon, closer to having nuclear capability, than when he took office.  This is the greatest failure, in my opinion, of his foreign policy.  He ran for office saying he was going to meet with Ahmadinejad.  He was going to meet with Castro, Kim Jong Il.  All the [...]

Filed Under: Iran, Mitt Romney, NBC, New York Times Tagged With: ,
Sep
04
2012

Ryan's Lies… I Mean, His 'Overreaches'

By 18 Comments

Paul Ryan's RNC convention speech kicked off a lot of discussion about how and when journalists should do factchecking. Some reporters noted that, for instance, the people you factcheck can push back; other pieces wondered if it was making any difference at all. There are plenty of factchecking operations, but there seems to be a feeling that the lying and deception is more significant now than it's ever been. But if you watched TV coverage of the Republican convention, you may not have seen much in the way of factchecking. More to the point, some of the discussions could get [...]

Filed Under: Budget, Election, Factchecking, Media Criticism, NBC Tagged With: , , , ,
Aug
31
2012

For Brokaw, It Doesn't Get Better Than Global Warming Denial

By 46 Comments
Tom Brokaw

NBC's Tom Brokaw from the Republican National Convention last night (8/30/12): The best line, I think, in the speech was the one in which he said: "President Obama wants to slow the growth of the oceans, I want to help you and your family." Yeah, wasn't that great when Romney pretended we weren't facing an ongoing global catastrophe, and made fun of people who thought we should do something about it? How can you top that?

Filed Under: Climate Change, Election, Mitt Romney, NBC Tagged With:
Aug
07
2012

War Propaganda, Olympics-Style

By 30 Comments

NBC's Olympics broadcast last night included a profile of Grenadian runner Kirani James. The small island is peaceful now, viewers learned, thanks in no small part to Ronald Reagan's decision to invade. Here's the clip: (UPDATE: As you can see, someone at NBC is keeping tabs on YouTube, and they've taken this down twice. You can watch the segment– along with a shampoo ad– at the NBC site.) The U.S. invasion is described as an attempt to "put down an Communist coup and restore the Grenadian government"; the broadcast goes on to refer to the U.S. "liberation" of the country. In [...]

Filed Under: Media Criticism, NBC, sports, War/Military
Aug
07
2012

Presidential Campaign as Olympics: Chuck Todd's Tired Routine

By 20 Comments

Coverage of national political campaigns is generally pretty bad–a parade of polls, horesrace analysis and fundraising tallies, with pundits doing their best at pretending they're campaign strategists. Can it actually get worse than that? Maybe. NBC reporter Chuck Todd made that case with a full page article in the Washington Post on August 5 that compared the Obama/Romney contest to Olympic gymnastics. The concept behind it is corny, but even Todd seems to think so. Apparently this is supposed to be, well, kind of fun: "At NBC, to say we have Olympics fever is an understatement," he writes at the top. [...]

Filed Under: Election, Media Criticism, NBC, sports, Washington Post Tagged With:
Jul
17
2012

David Gregory Makes a Romney Campaign Ad

By 21 Comments

On Sunday (7/15/12), Meet the Press host David Gregory caught Barack Obama in a big-time flip flop on taxes. At least, that's what he seems to think. Gregory said: What the president would like to do is extend the Bush tax cuts for those making less than $200,000, or $250,000, as a family, and then taxes would go up on people above that. Back in 2010, when this issue first came up, this is what President Obama said back then. And then Gregory played this clip from Obama: I am just listening to the consensus among people who know the [...]

Filed Under: Barack Obama, Economy, NBC, 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: ,
Apr
24
2012

Who Thinks Paul Ryan Is Mr. Serious?

By 11 Comments

Sometimes it's the little moments that tell you something–like this from a Meet the Press panel discussion (4/22/12) about potential running mates for Mitt Romney: DAVID GREGORY: E.J., the point though also about Paul Ryan is that if you want to send a message you're serious about the budget you could do that with Paul Ryan. DIONNE: Well, I don't think his budget is serious, so I disagree with the premise of the question. It's worth remembering that in the Beltway media, "Paul Ryan is Mr. Serious Budget" is the neutral, middle-of-the-road position, and someone who thinks otherwise–based on, you [...]

Filed Under: Budget, Election, NBC Tagged With: , , ,
Apr
24
2012

Prostitution Scandal Is the Big Government Story You Were Waiting For

By 6 Comments

The Beltway press is remarkably fixated on two stories: A "scandal" over an $800,000 General Services Administration (GSA) conference in Las Vegas, and the unfolding saga involving prostitutes and some Secret Service and military officers in Colombia. The White House thinks both are bad, of course, but not worth the amount of coverage they're getting. Beltway journalists think otherwise, and seem to want to believe that by paying so much attention to these stories they are a) standing up to the government by exposing wrongdoing; and b) not really talking about prostitutes at all, but telling a larger quasi-morality tale [...]

Filed Under: ABC, Budget, Latin America, NBC Tagged With: , , , , , ,
Mar
20
2012

U.S. Can't Win Afghan War Because We Aren't a Colonial Power

By 22 Comments

Now here's an anti-war argument I hadn't heard before, courtesy of conservative blogger/journalist Andrew Sullivan (on NBC's Chris Matthews Show, 3/18/12): SULLIVAN: Again, it just shows that America colonizes without any real colonial talent because this is a country built on escaping colonialism, not actually imposing it. MATTHEWS: Yeah. Well… SULLIVAN: You're doing something against the DNA of the United States. While the idea idea that the United States is not and has apparently never been a colonial power struck Matthews as a reasonable one, it might strike other people as rather odd. The Spanish-American War would seem to qualify [...]

Filed Under: Afghanistan, Latin America, NBC Tagged With: ,
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