IRS Targets Tea Party

There were three developments in the IRS-targets-the-Tea Party scandal in the past two days, all individually meriting coverage on their own right but, taken together as a package are most definitely newsworthy. Despite this, neither ABC's World News nor the CBS Evening News nor the NBC Nightly News spared even a second of coverage to them on their July 10 broadcasts. By contrast, time was…

On Thursday morning, ABC and NBC refused to cover the latest scoop in the IRS scandal. Politico reported on Wednesday afternoon that former IRS official Lois Lerner cautioned her colleagues about what they write in emails in case any of them come under congressional investigation. CBS This Morning did not do much better, as the news warranted only a 19 second mention during the 7:30 a.m. half…

This goes back to a week ago Saturday morning, but given the content and that it occurred on a weekend, it really needs more visibility. On June 28, Juan Williams put in an appearance on a Fox News "Cashin' In" show panel which discussed the IRS scandal. Host Eric Bolling discussed poll results revealing that three-quarters of Americans believe that the IRS deliberately destroyed emails, and…

One must perversely admire the gall of the New York Times editorial page. Sunday's lead editorial, "The Real IRS Scandal," says that the "real scandal" at the politicized agency isn't its targeting of citizens with anti-Obama views before the last election, isn't the suspiciously lost emails by an agent who pled the fifth before Congress, but a lack of sufficient funds because of the GOP.…

Media Research Center's Rich Noyes appeared on the Monday, June 30 edition of Fox Business Network's Varney & Co. to discuss the MRC's latest findings about the network news avoiding developments in the IRS scandal. "ABC, CBS, and NBC their evening newscasts did not touch the Lerner email story for seven days," Noted informed guest host Charles Payne. What's more, "it took a congressional…

Insisting that he's really been out of the domestic news loop, ABC News Supreme Court correspondent Terry Moran told Dan Joseph of NewsBusters sister site MRCTV.org this morning that he was in northern Iraq the past few weeks and wasn't really aware of his network's recent decisions to ignore stunning new developments in the IRS and VA scandals. What's more, he suggested, if folks really care…

If only there were an Obama scandal for journalists to cover. Almost exactly two years after the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank ludicrously claimed “the media would love to have an Obama scandal to cover,” on Sunday’s MediaBuzz on FNC, veteran DC journalist Julie Mason encapsulated the attitude of the Washington press corps which has little interest in the IRS scandal, insisting that “every…

In the Friday PBS NewsHour, anchor Judy Woodruff lamented the current impasse in Washington: "I don’t know what else to call it, war between congressional Republicans and the president." She sounded shocked that Speaker John Boehner filed suit to protest the president's constant end-runs around Congress and legislating from the White House on Obamacare, immigration, and other issues. Shields…

There’s a saying that “life isn’t one damn thing after another – it’s the same damn thing over and over again.” That’s essentially what Steve Benen, a producer for MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show,” argued regarding the IRS scandal in a Thursday blog post on the “TRMS” website. Benen claimed that throughout “the imaginary IRS ‘scandal,’ there’s [been] an interesting pattern of events that…

The New York Times's public editor on Friday responded to criticism about the paper's coverage of the IRS scandal, admitting: "The Times was somewhat late in beginning to cover the latest development about the lost emails." An analysis by the Media Research Center's Jeffrey Meyer on Thursday found that "in the past 6 months (183 days), the New York Times has published only 13 news items on the…

During Thursday’s edition of The Situation Room on CNN, host Wolf Blitzer committed an act of journalism in grilling IRS Commissioner John Koskinen with question after question about the growing IRS e-mail scandal. His questioning included one where he asked (via a Twitter follower), “[w]hy shouldn’t taxpayers use the crashed hard drive excuse when undergoing an IRS audit?” The interview,…

On the June 27 edition of CNN Newsroom, a panel discussed new calls from Ted Cruz that the IRS scandal needs a special prosecutor. John Avlon of The Daily Beast wasn’t buying it, trashing the Texas senator for leading a supposed witch hunt. He also argued that the root of the problem was the Citizens United ruling, and that the real solution is more campaign finance reform. When host Carol…

A staple of establishment press reporting is to attribute a contention to a limited group of people to either place the truth of a statement into doubt, or to make it appear that only the group involved holds that opinion. Examples taking this to the absolute extreme could include: "Conervatives say the sun rises in the east and sets in the west," and "Republicans believe that abortion takes a…

On Friday's Morning Joe program, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough complained about the absence of media attention to the fact that IRS commissioner John Koskinen, in charge of an organization currently embroiled in an investigation into whether it has unfairly targeted conservative groups during the Obama administration, is himself a "big Democratic donor" who has donated to President Barack Obama…