Broadcast Television

Not everyone at the NBC Universal umbrella of networks got the gag order memo about the Sept. 12 march on Washington, D.C. Rick Santelli, who has been a target of the Obama White House and is credited with being the inspiration for the 2009 tea party movement, spoke out about how the media ignored the march. But, a year after the fall of Lehman Brothers, he was making the larger point that the…

With the health care debate getting loud and furious, you have to wonder why Hollywood has been so remarkably silent. Maybe the Celeberati don’t care whether citizens have health care, or maybe they are happy with the generous coverage they get from SAG and AFTRA, and believe the President who tells them they will get to keep their current coverage.It can’t be accidental. Certainly there must be…

What follows is the executive summary of a New Culture & Media Institute Special Report (co-written by myself and Zoe Ortiz). Since the 1940s, an appearance on The New York Times Best Sellers List has been the mark of commercial success for any book. Authors with titles on the list can count on media attention to help sell even more copies. Unless they are conservatives.Conservative books and…

Who says the media are monolithic in their thinking? Yesterday we informed you of the media's serial misuse of an Obama-as-Hitler poster from esoteric left-winger Lyndon LaRouche's website, as outlets like NBC (on their Nightly News and Meet the Press), CNN and MSNBC all ascribed the poster to sentiments roiled up by talk radio host Rush Limbaugh specifically and conservatives generally.  We were…

The media have repeatedly stated how "angry," "hostile" and "ugly" town hall meetings across America are becoming. They are of course largely ascribing the nastiness to conservatives voicing their opposition to (among other things) President Barack Obama and Congress' proposed government takeover of the health care system. The press has been particularly offended by the "extreme" use of…

Today NewsBusters' parent organization, the Media Research Center (MRC), revealed that ABC News is not the only network guilty of giving Democratic-donating medical doctors a microphone to "report" on President Barack Obama's government health care proposal. CBS and NBC medical physician correspondents have also chipped in their own cash to Democratic - but never Republican - candidates."ABC,…

So Democrats don’t like all those ads for prescription drugs on T.V. – the ones for high cholesterol, enlarged prostates, dry eyes and, yes, ED. On C-Span recently, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D., Calif., said “a lot of people start thinking they have medical problems because they’ve seen too many of these commercials. I don’t think that’s doing the public a…

The much anticipated list finally arrived. Many hard working producers, writers, and actors waited with baited breath to hear the possibly career-changing announcement; hoping that their dedication to their craft and the constant effort to produce quality television had paid off. And then they realized, "Oh wait, the Emmys have ignored us for years..." It's a point driven home this year with the…

Last Tuesday, NewsBusters Editor-at-Large Brent Baker noted that seven soldiers who had been killed the week prior in Afghanistan received just 1/20th of the evening newscast time that ABC, CBS, and NBC devoted to the passing of pop star Michael Jackson. The same day, NewsBusters Publisher and Media Research Center President Brent Bozell slammed the broadcast networks in a statement: "There is no…

Reacting to Media Research Center (MRC) analysis showing the deaths of seven U.S. soldiers killed in Afghanistan recently has received just 1/20th of the network coverage devoted to Michael Jackson, NewsBusters Publisher and MRC President Bozell Bozell released the following statement earlier today:This is a prime example of why network television news audiences are disappearing before our eyes…

Got this e-mail earlier this afternoon, which pretty much says it all about ABC's news priorities:The links in the e-mail are after the jump.

Clearly, the most important takeaway from ABC's low-rated White House forum on health care was President Barack Obama's admission that he would go outside the constraints of a nationalized system to get the "very best care" if necessary for his own family.Hot Air's Ed Morrissey noted that Obama's response should properly be seen as "a Michael Dukakis moment that exposed him as a hypocrite."A…

Earlier today, Julia A. Seymour of the Media Research Center's Business & Media Institute (BMI) pointed to a fact-check done by her group showing that "from January 20 to June 16 those quoted in health care stories on ABC's morning and evening news shows favored ObamaCare by a 3-to-1 margin (55 supporters to 18 critics)."You think that margin is bad; wait until you see the ratio at ABC of…