Broadcast Television
CW's 'Provocative' Ad Campaign Targets Teens and Blasphemes God
May 6th, 2008 1:18 PM
“OMFG” is text-speak for the unspeakable. It's also the tag line for a new ad campaign aimed at teens and featuring a jumble of sexual situations, including teens undressing each other and two girls kissing. The campaign blitz is appearing in print and television, all aimed at drumming up eyeballs for the CW network's teen-themed soap "Gossip Girl."For the uninitiated, “OMG” translates to “Oh…
MRC/NB's Bozell On Clinton's Venture Into O'Reilly's 'No Spin Zone
May 2nd, 2008 10:57 AM
Hillary Clinton's recent appearance on "The O'Reilly Factor" was a play for superdelegate support at the Democratic Convention, MRC President Brent Bozell argued on the May 2 "Fox & Friends" in a segment joined by liberal talk show host Mike Papantonio. [audio available here] Asked about the media and if it will follow up any more on the Rev. Wright controversy, the NewsBusters publisher…
CBS Falsely Reports Rand Study on the Cost of Illegal Immigration
April 30th, 2008 6:32 PM
An April 7 CBS Evening News report on the health care monetary burden of illegal aliens on American taxpayers has just now drawn the ire and the fire of the two largest Hispanic grievance groups -- the National Council of La Raza (translation: "The Race") and the Mexican American Legal and Educational Fund (MAL (not Mos) DEF).Byron Pitts' piece is fairly mild and pretty much down the middle of…
Apostles of Atheism Redux: CBS, ABC Publicize Plight of Army Atheist
April 29th, 2008 12:07 PM
Religion and the military shouldn't mix. That's the take away message that both CBS and ABC touted when their Sunday morning news programs publicized the plight of an atheist who is suing the Army for religious discrimination. On April 27th CBS's Sunday Morning and ABC's Good Morning America Sunday each featured the story of Jeremy Hall, an Army specialist who claims he was denied promotion and…
Mostly (But Not All) Katie: Combined Big 3 Evening Newscasts' Decline
April 20th, 2008 7:13 PM
Interest in the presidential election should be driving up ratings for the Big Three networks' evening news shows, right? Wrong. Here is how evening news viewership at ABC, NBC, and CBS for the two most recent available weeks compares to the analogous weeks of 2007 (From Media Bistro's TV Newser: April 7, 2008; March 31, 2008; April 9, 2007; April 2, 2007):
Morning Shows Ignore Rockefeller Smear of McCain, Military Pilots
April 9th, 2008 5:45 PM
Our news analysts at the MRC have combed through the April 9 editions of ABC's "Good Morning America," CBS's "The Early Show," and NBC's "Today," and found zero mentions of the comments that Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) made smearing McCain and military pilots past and present.[See a related NewsBusters item by Clay Waters here.]Yesterday I noted how news agencies were slow to cover the story,…
CBS News: The Beginning of the End
April 7th, 2008 10:40 PM
Is this the beginning of the end for CBS News? Or is this just the TV world's version of a joint operating agreement?CBS, the home of the most celebrated news division in broadcasting, has been in discussions with Time Warner about a deal to outsource some of its news-gathering operations to CNN, two executives briefed on the matter said Monday.Over the last decade, CNN has held intermittent…
Early Show and GMA Deliver Pregnant 'Man' PR
April 3rd, 2008 4:15 PM
Men don't have babies. Period. Yet in covering the ‘pregnant man' story this morning both the "Early Show" and "Good Morning America" neither outlet dealt with this fact. Rather, both were completely focused on the fact that Thomas Beatie was speaking publicly for the first time and would be shown on today's "Oprah" show. Both outlets also reported that Beatie's story would appear in this…
New Special Report: Apostles of Atheism
March 25th, 2008 4:43 PM
In all the brouhaha last week over the incendiary comments made by Barack Obama's pastor the media seemed to forget to partake in their traditional Holy Week Christian-bashing excercise. There were a few entries in the "Easter Hit Parade," like the Comedy Central show "Root of All Evil" which my boss, Brent Bozell, wrote about in a column recently, and an episode of "Law and Order" which…
Essay: Obama’s Reverent Wright-Wing Media
March 24th, 2008 2:30 PM
Editor's Note: This originally appeared in Human Events today -- Monday, March 24th.The Big Three Networks and Their Plan to Protect Obama (PPO)Why did it take until Thursday March 13, 2008, for the nation to begin to learn about Barack Obama's pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright? The man whose Trinity United Church of Christ Obama has attended and generously funded for seventeen years? Whom he…
Essay: Eliot Spitzer – A Man Without A Party
March 12th, 2008 1:04 PM
Democrats dialing for damsels don't get labeled with the big "D" Changing His MindRonald Reagan often said "I did not leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me." For floundering and foundering New York Governor Eliot Spitzer -- a twist on the Gipper's words. Spitzer didn't leave the Democratic Party: the Media just didn't see the need to mention the fact that Spitzer was…
Eliot Spitzer Scandal Inspires Plethora of Jokes and Parody Songs
March 11th, 2008 10:42 AM
Perhaps New York Governor Eliot Spitzer believes he can weather the firestorm over his scandal about his patronizing of a high-class prostitution ring. However, he is battling an element that will keep his scandal alive in the public more than the usual political scandal---humor. Spitzer's breaking scandal is less than a day old and already the media and the blogosphere is filled with many jokes…
The Media's Nauseating Approach to Terror Reporting
March 7th, 2008 3:25 PM
The Media, as Sisyphus, Unwinding its Terror TaleThere is a push by the Jurassic Press -- in two directions at once -- to frame just-so their presentation of the murder and murderers engaged in the attempted global implementation of political Islam. One such shove was again demonstrated by the New York Times this past February 13th. The Media attempt to present these bits of human flotsam -- and…