Here are today's news items from Media Matters for America, click on the title or 'read more' to read the entirety of each story.

2008 Elections

Hume: Clintons' "ability to withhold information from the public extends ... to the University of Arkansas library"
On Fox News' Special Report, Brit Hume asserted that "[t]he Clintons' ability to withhold information from the public extends not just to the Clinton Presidential Library it seems, but also to the University of Arkansas library as well," but provided no evidence to support that claim. Indeed, Hume later said: "The Clinton campaign says it has not had any contact with the University of Arkansas about delaying the release of the papers." Read more

Today report on possible Kerik indictment included no mention of Giuliani
On NBC's Today, Natalie Morales reported on the possible indictment of Bernard Kerik without noting his connections to Rudy Giuliani. Morales stated that Kerik "was once nominated to be the head of the Department of Homeland Security," but did not mention that Giuliani urged President Bush to nominate his former bodyguard, Kerik, to the post. Read more

MSNBC called Robertson and Giuliani "both strong supporters of Israel," but omitted past relevant statements by Robertson
Reporting on Pat Robertson's endorsement of Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, MSNBC anchor Peter Alexander asserted, "Giuliani and Robertson: both prostate cancer survivors, both strong supporters of Israel." MSNBC campaign reporter Matthew Berger stated, "They have traveled to Israel together." And NBC News political director Chuck Todd said that "to a lot of evangelicals, the war against Islamic fundamentalism, protecting Israel is actually a bigger issue than some of these other issues." But at no point in discussing Robertson and Israel did an MSNBC news anchor or Todd note Robertson's past controversial comments regarding former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's stroke and former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's assassination.
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Citing NPR story, Wash. Post's Kornblut falsely claimed Obama was "unresponsive to a voter in a campaign stop"
In a November 8 entry to washingtonpost.com's The Trail weblog, Washington Post staff writer Anne E. Kornblut wrote that Sen. Barack Obama's (D-IL) presidential campaign "t[ook] a hit" in a National Public Radio story "for being unresponsive to a voter in a campaign stop." The report, which aired on the November 8 broadcast of NPR's Morning Edition, featured White House correspondent David Green interviewing Geri Punteney, an Iowa woman who told Obama about her brother's cancer at a campaign event. Green reported that Obama told Punteney he would "[m]aybe ... write him [her brother] a note" and played an audio clip of Obama saying, "Maybe I'll write him a note before -- before you leave today." Later in the report, Green played a clip of Punteney explaining that she never got a note from Obama, saying, "He didn't have time, I guess." However, in claiming that the Obama campaign was "unresponsive" to Punteney, Kornblut ignored other facts in Green's report: that Obama went over to Punteney and held her hand and that Punteney said, "[J]ust knowing that, you know, he knows, that means more than a note." Additionally, when Morning Edition co-host Steve Inskeep asked Green, "Note or no note, David Green, did she feel that she got what she came for when she went to that presidential campaign event?" Green replied, "She says that she got exactly what she came for, that she just wanted to be noticed." Read more

On Hannity's radio show, Willey contradicted her book's account of whether Shearer was said to have "ironclad" alibi
On Sean Hannity's radio show, Kathleen Willey said the FBI checked out the alibi of the person she claims "harmed or killed" her cat and "threatened [her] children" two days before her deposition in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case, but that the FBI found the alibi "not so much ironclad as uncheckable." But in her forthcoming book, Willey states that "FBI investigators looked into it thoroughly" and "[o]n the one hand, I was told that [suspect Cody] Shearer had an 'airtight' and 'ironclad' alibi, but another source told me that it was 'uncheckable.' " Media outlets have reported Shearer's statements that he has documents proving he was in California at the time Willey claims she was confronted by the "jogger."
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Drudge promotes story about Clinton's alleged failure to tip, but includes only campaign's refutation -- not restaurant's
On the front page of The Drudge Report on November 8, Internet gossip Matt Drudge linked to ABC News and National Public Radio (NPR) articles that reported Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's (D-NY) presidential campaign did not leave a tip after a stop at a Maid-Rite Restaurant in Marshalltown, Iowa. Accompanying the two links was a line of text reading: "**Clinton campaign official: 'The campaign spent $157 and left a $100 tip at the Maid-Rite Restaurant' ..." In fact, it was not just the Clinton campaign that rebutted the claim, as Drudge suggested; the restaurant itself affirmed that the campaign had left a tip. Read more

Wash. Post's Balz repeated false claim that Bill Clinton attacked Democrats in recent speech
In a November 8 report, Washington Post staff writer Dan Balz repeated the false claim that former President Bill Clinton attacked Democratic presidential candidates for "swift-boating" his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), in the context of her response during the Democratic presidential debate to questions from debate moderator Tim Russert about New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's (D) proposal to allow illegal immigrants to obtain driver's licenses. In fact, in his speech, Bill Clinton criticized Republican attacks on Democrats and the role the media play in contributing to such attacks, as Media Matters for America noted. Read more

LGBT Issues

In CNN report, Yellin claimed possible "political headache" for Dems with ENDA vote, citing 2006 ads "about Nancy Pelosi's radical homosexual agenda"
On the November 7 edition of CNN's The Situation Room, congressional correspondent Jessica Yellin asserted that the then-upcoming House vote on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) "could be a real political headache for some Democrats, especially when you consider the ads that ran last election cycle about [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi's [D-CA] radical homosexual agenda." But in contrast to her suggestion that ENDA could be "a real political headache for some Democrats," Yellin herself noted at the end of her report that polling shows Americans overwhelmingly favor protections for gay men and lesbians against workplace discrimination: "[A]bout 90 percent of Americans say gays and lesbians should be protected from employment discrimination. The overall sense from pollsters is that Americans believe discrimination is wrong, no matter who's the target." Read more

O'Reilly, still not relaxing "on all this gay stuff," took issue with IL high school seniors voting lesbians "Cutest Couple"
On the November 7 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, reporting on the recent crowning of two girls as "Cutest Couple" during an annual senior yearbook poll at Waukegan High School in Illinois, host Bill O'Reilly said to his guest, Dr. Laura Berman, assistant clinical professor of psychiatry and obstetrics/gynecology at Northwestern University, "[T]he kids voted this couple the cutest couple to tweak the adults, Doctor, to cause trouble, to make an issue of the yearbook." O'Reilly later claimed: "A lot of parents say, 'Listen, we don't want to normalize homosexuality in a public way in an academic setting, high school, among minors.' " When Berman, who had previously said -- "homosexuality is becoming, thankfully, more normalized, because this is the time in adolescence that kids are exploring their sexuality and, in fact, starting to identify what their sexual orientation is" -- asked, "Why?" O'Reilly replied, "Well, for a number of reasons. One: social. It's much more difficult to be a homosexual than a heterosexual in America. Two: religious. There are people who believe that that kind of a lifestyle ... is against their religion. And they pass that on to their children. ... Three: an exposition of sexuality in a minor -- and that's very important -- in a minor situation is inappropriate in an academic setting. All of those things are valid, Doctor." Read more

War in Iraq

Olbermann named Hume "Worst Person" for omitting pertinent information in his report on Iraqi refugees
During the November 7 edition of MSNBC's Countdown, host Keith Olbermann named Fox News Washington managing editor Brit Hume, who hosts Fox News' Special Report, the "winner" of his nightly "Worst Person in the World" segment for, as Media Matters for America documented, omitting pertinent information during a November 5 report on the flow of Iraqi refugees. Olbermann stated: "But our winner, Brit Hume of Fox Noise's newscast of record, leading wedge in the newest spin about how great it is in Iraq. 'A worker at the Iraqi Airways office in Damascus,' he reported, 'says the flow of refugees from Iraq to Syria has almost reversed. Once-full flights from Baghdad are now virtually empty, and flights headed the other way have considerably more passengers.' " Olbermann added, "And from your reporting, I'm guessing the only possible explanation is that Iraq is now all safe and its citizens can return to their homes?" Read more

Propaganda/Noise Machine

O'Reilly misrepresented NY Times article to accuse it of "deceiv[ing] the public" regarding Olbermann's ratings
Bill O'Reilly asserted that The New York Times is not "honest" because an article stated that "MSNBC is competitive with The [O'Reilly] Factor at 8 p.m.," claiming, "MSNBC had no overall ratings growth at 8 p.m. None. In the past five weeks, the Factor has beaten them by 225 percent in total audience and 100 percent in the key demo [the 25- to 54-year-old marketing demographic]." In fact, the article stated that MSNBC's Countdown has "[o]n some nights recently ... come tantalizingly close to surpassing" the Factor "among viewers ages 25 to 54" and noted that "[m]ost of the time, though, Mr. O'Reilly outdraws Mr. Olbermann by about 1.5 million viewers over all at the same hour, according to Nielsen Media Research." Read more

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