Middle East

Roughly five minutes into MSNBC’s Inauguration coverage, host Brian Williams switched gears from discussing Donald Trump becoming President to mythologizing President Obama for having “elevated the office...improved by touching the office and shown great respect for the office he's the custodian of.”

Appearing as a guest on Wednesday's New Day on CNN, Georgetown University professor and former MSNBC analyst Michael Eric Dyson likened police actions against black Americans to terrorism as CNN's Chris Cuomo argued that many voters were motivated to vote for Donald Trump by non-race-related issues like terrorism from ISIS.  Dyson griped: "Color-neutral and ISIS? Many African-American people said…

Friday’s edition of Dateline NBC featured the long-planned hour-long special Reality of Hope dedicated to outgoing President Barack Obama and, naturally, NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt stayed clear of all Obama scandals in lieu of gush over his so-called accomplishments. 

Esquire’s Pierce readily concedes that Ben Carson (“an elite neurosurgeon”) and Mike Pompeo (“graduated at the top of his class at West Point”) are smart guys. In a way, though, they’re also tragic figures, he suggests, since they’ve “had to tailor their politics and their public personae to cater to the anti-rational, theocratic, anti-intellectual Id of modern conservatism…This means that both…

On Christmas evening, appearing in print on Sunday, December 26, Jeremy Peters at the New York Times pretended that the term "fake news" has only gained common currency very recently during the social media era. He also effectively contended that the establishment press holds ownership rights over the term, claiming that "conservative cable and radio personalities, top Republicans and even Mr. (…

Just another day at the office for NBC News, folks. On Thursday, Tablet magazine writer Yair Rosenberg caught NBC News correspondents Ayman Mohyeldin and Cal Perry publishing a error-laden piece on NBCNews.com about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that was later rewritten without a correction.   

On Thursday's New Day on CNN, during a segment pitting liberal CNN political commentator Peter Beinart against former CIA director James Woolsey, Beinart bristled at Woolsey's warnings that Jews trying to live in a Palestinian Arab state would be in grave danger of being attacked and killed as he asserted that it was a "racist claim" for the former CIA director to make. Beinart found comfort that…

MSNBC host and NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell scored an exclusive interview on Wednesday afternoon with Secretary of State John Kerry following his speech blasting Israel and, not surprisingly, she served up softballs for Kerry up to attack Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “How difficult is it for you to operate in this atmosphere where the President-elect is…

It would be a good idea for journalists to be wary of any anti-Israel or left-leaning guests making claims about how much foreign aid the U.S. grants Israel each year, since on two occasions just Wednesday, CNN guests managed to pass off wildly overstated claims about how much the U.S. spends in supporting the Jewish state and only liberal democracy in the Middle East. On CNN's Wolf show, pro-…

On Wednesday afternoon, a CNN panel reacted to Secretary of State John Kerry’s speech lambasting Israel with praise for the “personal and passionate” address at the State Department aimed at a supposedly vast base of global supporters who believe in a two-state solution.

Appearing as a panel member on Wednesday's CNN Newsroom, Jason Johnson of The Root ridiculously claimed, during a discussion before Secretary of State John Kerry's speech on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that the United States "gives the vast majority of its foreign aid to Israel." In fact, according to the Washington Post, of the approximately $50 billion dollars the U.S. is expected to…

Recent terrorist attacks in Ankara, Turkey, and Berlin, Germany, add to a growing list of incidents that are becoming increasingly difficult to remember. Does one begin the list with the plane hijackings in the '60s and '70s, or the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, or the USS Cole attack in 2000, or the second World Trade Center attack in 2001, or Ft. Hood, San Bernardino, Orlando, Paris…

On Wednesday's New Day, during a discussion of President Barack Obama issuing a record number of pardons and commutations before leaving office, CNN commentators Errol Louis and David Gregory both spoke up in defending his actions. Louis even repeated the term "mass incarceration," which in recent years has been commonly used on the left when complaining that too many criminals are in prison.

On Tuesday's The Situation Room on CNN, substitute anchor Brianna Keilar not only worried that President-elect Donald Trump was "jumping the gun" by calling the attacks in Turkey and Germany "radical Islamic terrorism" too soon "before any information was out there," but she also fretted that Trump was "dangerously close to making this look like a religious war."