Debates

On Sunday’s State of the Union, fill-in host Dana Bash sat down with newly-elected Speaker of the House Paul Ryan about his goals for the new job but did her best to play up the supposed dysfunction among House GOPers. The CNN host played up the liberal line that members of the House Freedom Caucus are a major problem for Republican leadership and asked Ryan “How are you going to control the 40…

On Friday's Real Time with Bill Maher, the liberal HBO comedian opened the show trashing GOP presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson by not only including him in a joke about Bill Cosby's history of rape, but also by advancing false assertions that Dr. Carson claimed to be "cured" of prostate cancer by a controversial nutritional supplement when video shows Carson clearly did not claim the…

Friday's NBC Nightly News set aside just 34 seconds of air time to the Republican National Committee suspending its planned February 2016 debate with NBC. The evening newscast surrounded this coverage with over two minutes of reporting on other 2016 presidential campaign developments, focusing on the spat between Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush. By contrast, ABC's World News Tonight and CBS Evening News…

In a letter to NBC News president Andrew Lack on Friday, Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus informed the network “that pending further discussion between the Republican National Committee (RNC) and our presidential campaigns, we are suspending the partnership with NBC News for the Republican primary debate at the University of Houston on February 26, 2016.”

While much of the media ruled that Jeb Bush did not have a satisfactory debate performance on Wednesday, the sentiment stretched even into the late-night comedy shows as ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel panned the “embarrassing” Bush on Thursday for attacking Rubio on an issue “that literally no one outside of Florida cares about” concerning his Senate attendance record.

CNN’s senior media correspondent, Brian Stelter, during Thursday’s AC360, lamented how Republican presidential candidates have often attacked the liberal media “to deflect tough, unwelcome questions,” arguing their conservative supporters have caused “more polarization” in the electorate by not trusting the media.

Friday's Morning Joe featured a discussion by the roundtable on the subject of the debates and the fairness needed for them. While Newsbusters previously discussed Morning Joe's discussion on the bias of moderators, Morning Joe also discussed their surprise and support of Dr. Ben Carson, who has come out leading the change to reform these debates.

Making his now semi-frequent appearance on a primetime MSNBC show, lefty blogger Charles Pierce was on Thursday’s All In to trash the 2016 Republican presidential candidates as merely “a bunch of unruly, nasty children” during Wednesday’s CNBC debate and suggested that “the next one” should take place “in a sandbox.”

On Friday, NBC’s Today tried to spin Republicans objecting to CNBC’s disastrous debate moderators as a problem for the GOP. Co-host Matt Lauer declared: “Grand old problems. Republican candidates reportedly planning to meet about changing how future debates are organized...”

A Media Research Center analysis of the questions posed by moderators John Harwood, Carl Quintanilla and Becky Quick at CNBC's Republican presidential debate found nearly two-thirds (65%) hit the candidates with negative spin, personal insults or ad hominem attacks. In contrast, all of the questions posed by CNBC personalities Jim Cramer, Rick Santelli and Sharon Epperson focused on policy…

When this NewsBuster began preparing today's item, the focus was going to be on Joe Scarborough's statement on today's Morning Joe that "90% of the people in our business vote for Democrats and Democratic primaries." Not that it was something we didn't already know [though query whether even 10% of MSMers are Republicans], but refreshing to hear it so starkly stated. But preparing the video clip…

Appearing as a guest on Thursday's Anderson Cooper 360, CNN Senior Political Analyst David Gergen admitted that GOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio "had a point" during the debate in calling out the media for ignoring Hillary Clinton's "clear inconsistency" in her Benghazi story, conceding that he had also joined in the media chorus focusing on "praising her performance." But the CNN…

As one of the few liberal outlets willing to stand up for CNBC and its three moderators after Wednesday’s atrocious Republican presidential debate, Gawker and writer Hamilton Nolan tried on Thursday to take conservatives to task by lamenting that exposing the liberal media “is the most popular refuge of the scoundrel” showing that the GOP field is neither “honest” nor “wise.”

New York Times political reporters Nicholas Confessore, Alan Rappaport, and Maggie Haberman live blogged the third GOP debate, and while the NYT didn't have a problem with the slanted questions from CNBC, they were quite perturbed over the counterattacks from the candidates, a pile-on jump-started by a lengthy and detailed off-the-cuff condemnation by Ted Cruz: "...candidates whine about media…