Syria

Just after the undercard Republican presidential debate began on Tuesday night, the “big three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC offered previews of the impending “freewheeling and fiery slugfest” debate and contrasted that with plenty of laudatory rhetoric for “grown up” Hillary Clinton as she spoke in Minnesota about ISIS and “slamm[ed] Republicans for fearmongering.”

The year isn't even over, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Time's 2015 Person of the Year, has begun to act against the primary reason why the magazine chose her. To refresh from a NewsBusters post last week, Time's Nancy Gibbs cited three reasons for the choice. The clearly most important one, from their perspective, was Merkel's virtually unilateral decision that Germany "would welcome…

As the Reverend Franklin Graham appeared on Tuesday's CNN Newsroom to promote a national call to prayer, host Carol Costello raised charges that "heated rhetoric about Muslims" is "causing mosques to come under attack," and, after asking her guest if he thought Islam was "compatible with American values," fretted over his answer when he responded, "I don't think so." The CNN host followed up: "…

On Monday's Erin Burnett OutFront, CNN National Correspondent Jason Carroll delivered a heavily one-sided report highlighting charges by the Council on American-Islamic Relations that GOP presidential candidates -- specifically naming Ben Carson, Chris Christie and Donald Trump -- have been partly to blame for inspiring a recent spate of attacks against Muslims in the U.S.

The “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC all prominently touted on Monday night President Barack Obama’s visit to the Pentagon to discuss the fight against ISIS, but skimped on reporting any criticism of the administration’s strategy but instead lamenting that he’s had to try once “again to reassure an anxious nation” despite polls showing Americans are concerned about the growing threat of terrorism…

On her eponymous CNN show on Thursday night, Christiane Amanpour verbally harassed former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair over his involvement in the Iraq War and specifically whether he and former U.S. President George W. Bush “feel pain” and “a sense of responsibility” for the war having supposedly caused recent Islamic terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino.

Josh Lederman at the Associated Press spent the final two paragraphs of his Wednesday evening report on a meeting between President Barack Obama and Israel's President Reuven Rivlin describing "the White House's annual Hanukkah celebration." He wrote that Rivlin "lit a menorah that was made in his homeland during the 1920s." What was said before Rivlin lit the menorah should have been news. As…

On Friday, ABC and CBS's evening newscasts touted how Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau "personally welcoming Syrian refugees" as they flew into Toronto. ABC's David Muir heralded, "Trudeau greeting fathers, mothers, and children — telling them — quote, 'You're home.'" CBS's Scott Pelley spotlighted the "noteworthy landing — 163 refugees escaping the war in Syria were welcomed to Canada by…

The December edition of the CBS News/New York Times poll came out on Thursday and, naturally, the results were covered on the CBS Evening News but, as per the liberal media’s usual pattern, it left out a slew of poll results in which voters gave President Obama poor marks on terrorism, the fight against ISIS, and how the country remains on the wrong track. Instead, CBS chose to devote all of its…

The last person you'd imagine backing Donald Trump's Muslim ban might be Mika Brzezinski. Yet on today's Morning Joe, a reluctant Mika came close to doing just that. Brzezinski springboarded off the news that the visa screening program failed to stop Tafsheen Malik from entering the country although she was already radicalized at the time. While professing her opposition to the plan, she called…

From the woman who brought you Benghazi, the Russian reset, the bungling of the Arab Spring, and the disregard for national security that compromised classified email material . . .  Yet , incredibly, Joe Scarborough today extolled Hillary's foreign policy credentials, claiming--not a typo--"what an amazing brand she would have to offer the American people right now. Even Republicans that are in…

Call Ayman Mohyeldin "the Duke Ellington Reporter" in homage to the jazz great's "Don't Get Around Much Anymore." Or perhaps you could say that Mohyeldin had his Pauline Kael moment, after the New York Times movie critic who, as legend has it, averred she couldn't understand how Nixon won since she didn't know anyone who voted for him. Isn't a reporter supposed to, you know, get around and speak…

One of James Taranto's tongue-in-cheek tropes at his Best of the Web Today column is "We Blame George Bush." As Wikipedia describes it, the trope "is a play on the perceived tendency for many of his detractors to lay the blame for pretty much anything" on Bush. In a recent example, "We Blame George W. Bush" was placed over a headline reading “Slipping Into a Food Coma? Blame Your Gut Microbes…

For a moment there, it looked like John Heilemann might go Absolut Olbermann and call Donald Trump a "fascist" for his proposal which would for the time being bar the entry of all Muslims into the United States. But Heilemann backed off that f-word. While noting "some will say fascist" about Trump or his policy, Heilemann declared "I'm not saying that." Instead, he settled for asserting that…