Middle East

Holy schnikes: was that really Ed Schultz, or has the soul of Norman Schwarzkopf suddenly assumed control of the MSNBC host's body? On his show this afternoon, Schultz—discussing the latest ISIS outrages—stunningly declared that we are in a "religious war" in which we haven't been "strong enough," and repeatedly raised the possibility that ground troops might be necessary to defeat ISIS.

On Friday's NBC Nightly News, Richard Engel zeroed in on an ISIS atrocity that hasn't gotten enough media attention – its sexual enslavement of women from Iraqi minority groups, especially the Yazidis. Engel interviewed two Yazidi women who escaped from their Islamist captors, and spotlighted that "ISIS is reviving the barbaric tradition of the slave trade." He later bluntly added, "There's a…

To “Today,” a comedy show retrospective is 11 times more important than Isis slaughtering Christians. In its first three hours Monday, “Today” spent 14 minutes 28 seconds on last night’s SNL40 anniversary of “Saturday Night Live” – another NBC production. On the other hand, it gave all of one minute, 20 seconds to a mass atrocity and the military response to it. The other networks also spent…

In an interview with left-wing website Vox.com released on Monday, President Obama downplayed the threat from radical Islamic terrorism and blamed the media for supposedly hyping the danger: "If it bleeds, it leads, right? You show crime stories and you show fires, because that's what folks watch, and it's all about ratings. And, you know, the problems of terrorism and dysfunction and chaos,…

Following zero coverage on Thursday evening of President Obama drawing a moral equivalency between ISIS and Christians, the networks continued their blackout into a second straight news cycle with no mention of it on any of their Friday morning newscasts. The evening broadcasts of ABC, CBS, and NBC combined to exclude any mention that the President told attendees at the National Prayer Breakfast…

Appearing on MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Reports on Friday, Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd was simultaneously critical and sympathetic toward President Obama while lamenting the commander-in-chief's poor handling of foreign policy: "...you do get the sense that there is a form of Iraq war syndrome that has impacted the administration here. Where are they doing everything that they want to do or…

Appearing on the Fox News Channel (FNC) program Hannity on Thursday night, Media Research Center President Brent Bozell called on NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams to do “the honorable thing” and “resign” following the lie that he had told for years that his helicopter was hit by an RPG over Iraq in March 2003. Bozell told host Sean Hannity that Williams’s claim about his false story being…

Speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, President Barack Obama took the step of comparing terrorist attacks by Islamic extremists to Christianity being the justification for the Crusades, slavery, and Jim Crow laws in America. The “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC all ignored the President’s critique of Christianity during the Thursday evening newscasts with only ABC’s World News…

Baltimore Sun media critic David Zurawik appeared on Thursday’s CNN Newsroom with Brooke Baldwin and continued to hold little back in criticizing NBC's Brian Williams for having falsely claimed his helicopter was shot down in Iraq. While also speaking with CNN’s Brian Stelter, Zurawik minced no words in describing what Williams did as lying and something that is grounds for his dismissal from his…

On Tuesday night, Lawrence O’Donnell devoted nearly four minutes of MSNBC show The Last Word to reading from and professing his complete admiration for President Barack Obama’s memoir Dreams From My Father as the “most honest,” “open,” “artful,” and “finest literary work ever authored by a President of the United States.” He spent no additional time on the book’s many inconsistencies, which…

On Wednesday, Stars and Stripes reported that NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams admitted to not being aboard a helicopter that was shot and had to be rescued following RPG fire during the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Williams stated that he “feels terrible” and “was wrong” for not telling viewers that he was instead “on the Chinook behind the bird that took the RPG.” The story comes…

Fareed Zakaria surprisingly pressed President Obama – a man he endorsed in 2008 – on his CNN program on Sunday. Zakaria raised how critics point out that "the White House takes pains to avoid using the term 'Islamic terrorists,'" and that "others say that you downplay the importance of terrorism." The President actually had to answer substantive questions on foreign policy – something he didn't…

In an interview aired on Monday's NBC Today, President Obama discovered that speaking to an actual journalist was a bit tougher than having YouTube celebrities lob softballs at him. In the exchange – conducted prior to the Super Bowl on Sunday – co-host Savannah Guthrie grilled the President over his handling of the war on terrorism: "You said in your State of the Union that American leadership…

None of the Big Three networks' evening newscasts on Friday covered the shooting of an American citizen in eastern Saudi Arabia earlier in the day. A Friday item by Reuters reported that "a vehicle carrying two U.S. citizens came under fire in the Eastern Province district of al-Ahsa, one of the main centers of Saudi Arabia's minority Shi'ites."