Broadcast Television

Arson, destruction, thievery, beatings and even murder – they’re the inevitable reaction to increased college tuition fees? To hear the broadcast news networks spin the violence and looting convulsing English cities in August, the riots were clashes between the “haves and the have-nots” (a term used by NBC reporter Martin Fletcher) in British society. According to the networks, an oppressed…

We've just spent the past month or so having politicians and the press tell us that if there was no debt-ceiling deal by August 2, the government might default on its debts (of course, Tim Geithner and Barack Obama could indeed have strategically defaulted if they had wished, but work with me here). But Sunday on Meet the Press, in a remark I expect will not be relayed much if at all by the…

NBC's going to have a tough time with critics from both directions on its new show "The Playboy Club."  Radical feminist Gloria Steinem casually dismissed the series in a panel discussion at the Television Critics Association confab in Los Angeles. Steinem, who once went undercover as a Playboy bunny, strongly suggested the show was exploiting the past to feed the male need for nostalgia in…

Note to TV networks: Don't even think about downsizing the disproportionate airtime you give gay characters and issues. The bean-counters at GLAAD are watching. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), in its fifth annual "Network Responsibility Index," recently ranked 15 networks based on their inclusion of LGBT characters on original primetime shows that aired…

Saturday night in Cincinnati, Fox 19's Kimberly Holmes Wiggins interviewed Ohio Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown from Washington about the state of the debt-ceiling debate. A full transcript follows. Contained therein readers will see the untruthful establishment press memes which have dominated their coverage, and all too typical disgraceful and predictable demagoguery by Brown. Similar…

For the past few days, everyone has relished the opportunity to pounce on the lack of media ethics by Rupert Murdoch affiliated tabloid News of the World, but are neglecting to recognize the lack of media ethics by much more mainstream media outlets on this side of the Atlantic. Over the past three years, often to the chagrin of TV news audiences, Casey Anthony has been the star of the…

Nearly ten years ago, Elizabeth Smart became a household name when she was abducted from her family's home in Utah and sparked a nationwide media frenzy. As a 23-year-old, she has just inked a deal with ABC to cover missing person cases on a number of programs, including "Good Morning America" and "Nightline."

... which helps explain why conservative radio continues to dominate the airwaves while Air America Radio, uh, went kaput. During a recent appearance on Tavis Smiley's PBS show, enviro lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose "Ring of Fire" show ran on Air America, made what reasonable souls among us might construe as a questionable claim. Here's Kennedy responding to a question from Smiley on…

Alleged comedian Kathy Griffin can't seem to get enough of the Palin family, this time mocking Bristol Palin's recent chin surgery in her standup act "Gurrl Down," which aired on Bravo at 9 pm on Wednesday. "I swear to god, she looks like Jay Leno" said Griffin. She then mocked Palin's statement that the surgery was medically necessary by making a crude reference to oral sex.

On Friday, Cass Sunstein, the White House's 56 year-old Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (pictured at right), attempted to disavow a 42-page paper he wrote called "Lives, Life-Years, and Willingness to Pay," which recommended that the government reduce resources directed at benefitting the elderly in favor of increasing what goes to young people, because young…

For those too young to remember, invoking a "long, hot summer" was a favorite pastime of the establishment press and so-called "civil rights leaders" after the race riots of the 1960s (example here). The message: Get that federal money flowing to us, or there will be violence in the streets. At CBS News, reporter Bill Whitaker wrapped his coverage of the teen unemployment situation as follows…

Update: Reaction from NB publisher Brent Bozell below the break. For some time now, it's been painfully obvious that objectivity in political reporting is a farce. So it should come as little surprise that when asked who they trust most for political reporting, many Americans draw a blank. That, at least, is what pollsters at Suffolk University have discovered. A 36 percent plurality of…

The following is cross-posted from Human Events, where Mattera serves as editor. Christian conservatives often decry the silencing of faith by major network television.  But Sunday night on CBS’ hit reality TV series “Undercover Boss,” people of faith had their breath taken away by what they witnessed, sparking a Facebook and Twitter avalanche of support and praise.  On Facebook, Kini Se…

One sign that the broadcast networks aren’t vigorously opposed to President Obama’s air strikes in Libya is the utter lack of polls. There were no ABC/Washington Post or NBC/Wall Street Journal polls touted before Obama’s Libya address, and a Gallup poll showing only 47 percent support for military action has been barely mentioned. CBS News did a poll (without The New York Times) and briefly…