The Media Lobbyists Lose on Guns
President Obama suffered a large, embarrassing loss in the Senate on a slew of gun-control bills. If this were a Republican president, they’d be sounding the lame-duck alarms on the nightly newscasts. But most media outlets can’t do this. They were fully invested in this campaign alongside Obama, and to underscore his weakness is to acknowledge their own.
The Media Lobbyists Lose on Guns
President Obama suffered a large, embarrassing loss in the Senate on a slew of gun-control bills. If this were a Republican president, they’d be sounding the lame-duck alarms on the nightly newscasts. But most media outlets can’t do this. They were fully invested in this campaign alongside Obama, and to underscore his weakness is to acknowledge their own.
The Media Lobbyists Lose on Guns
President Obama suffered a large, embarrassing loss in the Senate on a slew of gun-control bills. If this were a Republican president, they’d be sounding the lame-duck alarms on the nightly newscasts. But most media outlets can’t do this. They were fully invested in this campaign alongside Obama, and to underscore his weakness is to acknowledge their own.
The Media Lobbyists Lose on Guns
President Obama suffered a large, embarrassing loss in the Senate on a slew of gun-control bills. If this were a Republican president, they’d be sounding the lame-duck alarms on the nightly newscasts. But most media outlets can’t do this. They were fully invested in this campaign alongside Obama, and to underscore his weakness is to acknowledge their own.
The Media Lobbyists Lose on Guns
President Obama suffered a large, embarrassing loss in the Senate on a slew of gun-control bills. If this were a Republican president, they’d be sounding the lame-duck alarms on the nightly newscasts. But most media outlets can’t do this. They were fully invested in this campaign alongside Obama, and to underscore his weakness is to acknowledge their own.
Bozell Column: The Media Lobbyists Lose on Guns
President Obama suffered a large, embarrassing loss in the Senate on a slew of gun-control bills. If this were a Republican president, they’d be sounding the lame-duck alarms on the nightly newscasts. But most media outlets can’t do this. They were fully invested in this campaign alongside Obama, and to underscore his weakness is to acknowledge their own.
Since mid-December, the broadcast networks and cable news hosts like Piers Morgan and Joe Scarborough have relentlessly lobbied for gun control. On how many occasions did they completely shred the notion of objectivity -- of journalism itself -- and boldly engage in lobbying for gun control, using their networks as megaphones? Let’s consider a few recent moments.
Bill Moyers: ‘The Pledge of Allegiance is a Lie’
Veteran journalist Bill Moyers told his viewers on March 29 that the next time they say the Pledge of Allegiance, they should “remember: it’s a lie. A whopper of a lie.” Bill Moyers’s “Moyers & Company,” which included the snippet, airs on taxpayer funded PBS.
“We coax it from the mouths of babes for the same reason our politicians wear those flag pins in their lapels – it makes the hypocrisy go down easier, the way aspirin helps a headache go away.”
In a flurry of finger pointing, Moyers called out former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, as well as former Vice Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan and the company Halliburton for obstructing justice and trampling on the less fortunate.
(video below jump)
Bill Moyers: ‘The Pledge of Allegiance is a Lie’
Veteran journalist Bill Moyers told his viewers on March 29 that the next time they say the Pledge of Allegiance, they should “remember: it’s a lie. A whopper of a lie.” Bill Moyers’s “Moyers & Company,” which included the snippet, airs on taxpayer funded PBS.
“We coax it from the mouths of babes for the same reason our politicians wear those flag pins in their lapels – it makes the hypocrisy go down easier, the way aspirin helps a headache go away.”
In a flurry of finger pointing, Moyers called out former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, as well as former Vice Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan and the company Halliburton for obstructing justice and trampling on the less fortunate.
(video below jump)
PBS’s ‘Moyers & Company’ Publishes Lefty Voting Guide
PBS’s “Moyers & Company” released a series of articles in which his writers answer a question that “matters today” to answer. Both the selection and wording of the questions and the answers provided by Moyers’s staff strongly favor President Obama over challenger Mitt Romney.
Moyers’s status as a journalist has not kept him out of liberal politics. As the president of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, he has funded more than a dozen other prominent lefty organizations and has given more than $10 million to liberal groups since 2000. Often, Moyers has had guests on his shows from groups which he himself funds. “Moyers & Company” is presented on public television by WNET in New York and distributed by American Public Television.
‘Robin Hood Tax’ Gains Support of Soros, Moyers, Tides and Media
Proudly claiming the legendary outlaw Robin Hood as their inspiration, liberal groups and past Occupy Wall Street supporters are pushing for a “Robin Hood Tax” on corporate transactions. George Soros’s Open Society Foundation, Bill Moyers’s Schumann Center for Media and Democracy and the liberal Tides Foundation and Proteus Fund have given over $4 million to organizations that support the tax, according to the official Robin Hood Tax website.
Support for The Robin Hood Tax has come from both Europe and the United States. Although they haven’t gotten specific about which corporate transactions would be taxed, advocates claim such a tax would raise hundreds of billions of dollars, which could then be used to promote social programs or climate change prevention initiatives. Many of its proponents also have ties to the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Moyers & Company Attacks Conservative Organization, Promotes Liberal Group
It’s not Big Bird, but it sure is another reason to defund PBS. GRIT TV host and former Air-America Radio host Laura Flanders, substituting for Bill Moyers on PBS’s “Moyers & Company,” interviewed Color of Change executive director Rashad Robinson on September 28. The two liberals used their taxpayer funded platform to attack the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
ALEC is a non-profit organization that promotes state-based policy initiatives. It’s been heavily criticized by the left for its politically conservative stance on many issues. In March 2012, a group of lefty organizations including the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, the Center for Media and Democracy (which are not the same group, despite the similarities in name), the Center for American Progress, People for the American Way, United Republic, Common Cause and Color of Change, launched a campaign to pressure the corporations that funded ALEC to withdraw their support.
Moyers Documentary Slams Conservatives, Pushes Soros-Funded Group
Bill Moyers is at it again. In a documentary entitled “The United States of ALEC” aired as an episode of “Moyers & Company,” Moyers and the Center for Media and Democracy’s Lisa Graves attacked the American Legislative Exchange Council for half an hour.
“The United States of ALEC” was typical of a Center for Media and Democracy/ Common Cause hit job on ALEC. The documentary slammed the Koch Brothers and Koch Industries and attacked Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker at length, accusing him of being an ALEC pawn. Moyers also claimed that the state of Arizona is “practically an ALEC subsidiary.”
To Moyers’s nominal credit, this time he admitted at the beginning of the documentary that the research conducted for this project had been funded by both his own Schumann Center for Media and Democracy and by the Schumann-funded Center for Media and Democracy. Common Cause was also involved in the making of the video, although Moyers did not mention his connection to that group. The Schumann Center is listed as a donor on Common Cause’s website, but the amount is not specified.
PBS’s Moyers Presents Anti-ALEC Video
Bill Moyers will present “The United States of ALEC” documentary in conjunction with Common Cause, which he also funds. The United States of ALEC will premiere on public television sometime in late September, 2012 (date and time still undetermined). Moyers, who Common Cause called a “veteran journalist,” has been instrumental in both funding and publicizing the attacks against the conservative group ALEC.
The official website for “The United States of ALEC,” which is run by Common Cause, refers to the documentary as “a presentation of Bill Moyers” and states that it will be featured on “Moyers & Company.”
In an email, Bob Edgar of Common Cause urged readers to “help uncover ALEC” by either watching the movie or hosting “a viewing party.” The email called the documentary an “exposé of the American Legislative Exchange Council,” the “most influential corporate-funded political organization few Americans have ever heard about.”
The MRC@25: The Worst Media Bias of 2002
For the past two weeks, NewsBusters has been showcasing the most egregious bias the Media Research Center has uncovered over the years — four quotes for each of the 25 years of the MRC, 100 quotes total — all leading up to our big 25th Anniversary Gala September 27.
If you’ve missed a previous blog, recounting the worst of 1988 through 2001, they are here. Today, the worst bias of 2002: Bill Moyers gets the vapors after Republicans win control of Congress; ABC’s Barbara Walters champions Cuban dictator Fidel Castro’s dedication to “freedom;” and Reuters charges that “human rights around the world have been a casualty of the U.S. ‘war on terror.’” [Quotes and video below the jump.]
The Media vs. the GOP: Intolerant, Anti-Women, and Always Too Conservative
Bad weather may have forced Vice President Joe Biden to skip his plans to make mischief at this week’s Republican National Convention in Tampa, but Democrats don’t have to worry: the liberal “news” media have been “counter-programming” GOP conventions for decades.
It doesn’t matter whether the nominee is a conservative like Ronald Reagan, or a moderate like John McCain — network reporters always seem to scold the delegates and platform as too conservative, hostile to women, anathema to blacks, and an all-around turn-off to voters. [Below the jump: Video montage of the media's anti-GOP bias, 1988-2008]
Media Rush to Attack Gun Rights in Wake of Aurora Shooting
Within hours of the horrible massacre at the Aurora, Colorado movie theater, liberal reporters hijacked the tragedy to advance their anti-gun rights agenda. As they did in the wake of school shootings like Columbine (Back in 2000 the MRC documented, stories advocating gun control outnumbered those in favor of gun rights by a 10 to 1 ratio), the media were quick to heap blame on the NRA and Second Amendment supporters in their quest for more restrictions on guns.
On the very day of the Aurora shooting Time’s Michael Grunwald justified the oncoming push for gun control by the media when he pronounced: “There is nothing wrong with politicizing tragedy....Gun control and the Second Amendment are issues, too, and now seems like a pretty good time to talk about them.” (videos after the jump)
Bill O’Reilly Rips PBS’s Moyers for Blaming Colorado Shootings on NRA: ‘That’s So Dumb It Hurts’
As NewsBusters previously reported, in the wake of the tragic shootings in Aurora, Colorado, last week, PBS's Bill Moyers posted an online video essay excoriating the National Rifle Association as "enabler of death -- paranoid, delusional, and as venomous as a scorpion."
Fox News's Bill O'Reilly began his program Monday blasting Moyers for his remarks calling them "so dumb it hurts" and saying, "You're a genius, Bill. PBS is very lucky to have you" (video follows with transcript and absolutely no need for additional commentary):
PBS’s Bill Moyers Trashes America and the NRA As ‘Venomous…Enablers of Death’ (Corrected)
Correction: Moyers unleashed on the NRA and America in a "video essay" on the Moyers & Company website, but not on the July 20 PBS program.
With the first heart-breaking headlines out of Colorado, gun-rights advocates just had to know that leftist lecturers in our media would mount their soap boxes and trash this country for its gun culture and trash the National Rifle Association as an "enabler of death -- paranoid, delusional, and as venomous as a scorpion."
But it's additionally sad that the soap box in this case is paid for by taxpayers. On the website for his show Moyers & Company, 78-year-old PBS omnipresence Bill Moyers reached back to America's inhumane and vicious Westward expansion, when so many blood-thirsty Americans were killed because of their ineptitude with firearms:
Memo to Media: Common Cause Is Liberal, Not Centrist
It only takes a few minutes searching Google News to find a myriad of recent news stories referencing Common Cause as a "nonpartisan" group, a description that has long been obsolete when it comes to describing the liberal activist organization.
A few examples: Here's a Columbus, Georgia, newspaper editorial calling CC a "nonpartisan government watchdog group," and trying to pretend it is no more liberal than the Georgia Conservatives in Action and the Georgia Tea Party Patriots.
Here's a commentary published just a few days ago by Minneapolis Star-Tribune columnist Lori Sturdevant, who praises Common Cause and says in recent days it has "lived up to its nonpartisan billing -- something it has otherwise lost in GOP eyes, despite the Republican pedigree of its national founder, John Gardner."
That last bit of info is often tossed into articles defending Common Cause as a "nonpartisan" organization, as if the party registration of the founder of the group more than four decades ago has instilled the group with immutable centrist credentials, especially since party registration wasn't necessarily an indicator of ideology in those days.
As Sturdevant's column, lauding the resurrection of Common Cause in Minnesota, makes plain, the organization is on the side of the Left -- working with various liberal organizations to fight conservative organizations like the Minnesota Family Council and ALEC and support such liberal agenda items as gay marriage.
That's what you would expect from a group headed by a very liberal former Democratic congressman, Bob Edgar. It's also the sort of group that you'd expect to ask very liberal former Clinton cabinet member Robert Reich to chair its governing board. Common Cause's leadership board also includes Martha Tierney, legal counsel for the Colorado Democratic Party as vice chair of its board. The group has also featured leftist bombthrower Bill Moyers at its 40th anniversary dinner celebration.
But not every media outlet still buys the "centrist" description of Common Cause.
In this Sunday article in the Tuscaloosa News (Alabama), the reporter correctly mentions that ALEC has "conservative leanings," and then correctly notes that Common Cause is "a left-leaning Washington, D.C.-based group."
That's the proper description, as C.J. Ciaramella extensively documented yesterday at Washington Free Beacon in an article noting that Common Cause rather hypocritically accepts big money from liberal organizations to fight "big money in politics" - but of course only the big money on the conservative side.
Ciaramella wrote:
Common Cause—a nonprofit campaign finance and government reform organization whose stated goal is to “curb the excessive influence” of money and lobbying on government—is one of several organizations participating in a Wednesday protest against the conservative super PAC American Crossroads.
Other groups participating include Campaign for America’s Future, Rebuild the Dream, People for the American Way, Public Campaign, The Other 98%, Health Care for America Now, Alliance for Justice, Public Citizen, and the SEIU. According to the event flyer, which includes a picture of Karl Rove in an orange prison jumpsuit, the groups will hold a “march to indict” American Crossroads “for the crimes of trying to buy our elections and keep people from exercising their right to vote.” However, Common Cause has taken money from liberals willing to buy their way into elected office—and, despite claims of nonpartisanship, it also has a history of supporting progressive causes and affiliating with Democratic party organs.
But while the Washington Free Beacon and a few small-town papers out in flyover country like the Tuscaloosa News aren't fooled by Common Cause's common-but-false claim to be nonideological, too much of the media still pretends Common Cause is today what it was more than 40 years ago, rather than correctly informing readers and viewers that Common Cause is what it is today: A liberal astroturf group masquerading as a non-partisan government watchdog.