Convention Watch

For six days and counting (including this morning), the broadcast networks entertained the idea that Paul Ryan was lying in his convention speech last week. Yet the problem for journalists was that Ryan’s speech was accurate, even if they didn’t like the implications. NBC’s Chuck Todd on Thursday evening’s Nightly News, for example, even conceded that “what he [Ryan] said many times was…

At the top of Tuesday's NBC Today, co-host Savannah Guthrie teased an upcoming interview with Paul Ryan by slamming the Republican vice presidential candidate: "Paul Ryan joins us to talk about where he thinks the presidential race is headed and criticism that he's played fast and loose with the truth." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump] Beginning the interview with Ryan…

The hosts of the three network morning shows on Tuesday grilled Paul Ryan, questioning the Republican's facts and citing Joe Biden as a policy expert. Former Democratic operative turned journalist George Stephanopoulos highlighted a quote from the Vice President touting the last four years. Good Morning America's Stephanopoulos interrogated, "When [Biden] says Osama bin Laden is dead,…

Of the three morning shows, only ABC's Good Morning America on Monday highlighted two drunken delegates at the Democratic National Convention, one of whom was forced to leave North Carolina. Fill-in host Lara Spencer touted the story, asserting that "things are already off to a shaky start." Reporter Cecilia Vega explained, "Two California Democratic delegates partied into the wee hours of…

File this under unsurprising but notable, because it’s the type of story that mainstream media outlets will largely ignore in an attempt to protect an undeserving administration from anything that could hurt its re-election chances. According to a Washington Times report by Jim McElhatton, the U.S. Department of Labor allegedly paid a public relations company at least half a million dollars…

Immediately after Paul Ryan concluded his acceptance speech for the Republican Party's vice presidential nomination on Wednesday, the media sought ways to tear down the Wisconsin Congressman's indictment of the failures of the Obama administration. In particular, networks and newspapers attempted to knock down Ryan's accurate claim that President Obama promised to keep open a GM plant that closed…

The network morning shows on Friday slammed conservative actor Clint Eastwood's "bizarre," "rambling" endorsement of Mitt Romney at the Republican National Convention. Good Morning America, CBS This Morning and NBC's Today dissected the speech in 11 out of 12 segments about the convention. GMA guest host Amy Robach mocked, "The good, the bad and the ugly." She hyperbolically added, "Did…

Once again the folks at NBC News have "curated some of the notable speeches" from a night at the GOP convention. As I noted here and here, NBC left out some compelling speeches by minority politicians who started out in life as Democrats. This time, among the speeches that didn't make the cut was that of Tom Stemberg, the founder of Staples. Staples is one of the wildest success stories of Bain…

Appearing toward the end of Thursday night's MSNBC live coverage of the Republican National Convention, Time magazine's Mark Halperin defended President Barack Obama's infamous "You didn't build that" gaffe, as he portrayed President Obama as attempting to defend himself from false accusations by the GOP. After host Chris Matthews asserted a bit past 12:35 a.m. that Obama had not really…

Just moments after Mitt Romney finished his acceptance speech, NBC’s Tom Brokaw and Chuck Todd painted the GOP nominee as a backwards-looking candidate who was going back to the GOP’s “extreme” and less “inclusive” past. On NBC’s live coverage of Thursday’s Republican National Convention, Brokaw recalled covering Romney’s father and observed that while George Romney “fought” to make the GOP…

NBC news, during its live Thursday night coverage of the RNC,  skipped the first two-minutes and 50 seconds of Marco Rubio’s speech, as they joined the Florida Senator’s speech in progress after a commercial break. Viewers of NBC missed Rubio’s call for “prayers that soon freedom and liberty” will arrive in Cuba and recalling his grandfather’s inspiring message that: “There was no limit in how…

CNN's Piers Morgan fell on his face Thursday trying to fact-check Paul Ryan's RNC speech from the previous night. He was proven wrong not only by CNN's own report, but also by his guest Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. Challenging Ryan's point that a GM plant closed under Obama after he said it would stay open for years if it cooperated with the government, Morgan said the plant "closed down…

Piers Morgan said on Thursday that the Todd Akin controversy supports "the argument that the Republican Party is anti-women," playing into the Democratic playbook. "I suppose the problem is what it does is it lends again succor to the argument that the Republican Party is anti-women," he stated after bringing up Akin's remarks in an interview with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and his wife…

The liberal media can’t seem to help themselves. While counter-arguments are occasionally acknowledged, most journalists of the progressive persuasion are not interested in fair and balanced coverage of politics. Facts and figures are seemingly subjective in the whole scheme of things. Severely limited studies and polls seem to provide them with all the information they need. Oh, and almost…