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

CNN suggested Dems' support for writers' strike compromised by media moguls' money
On the November 26 edition of CNN's The Situation Room, host Wolf Blitzer suggested Democratic presidential candidates were "trying to have it both ways" by expressing support for the strike by the Writers Guild of America despite having accepted contributions from entertainment executives. During the report itself, general assignment correspondent Kareen Wynter stated: "They're speaking out for writers, but the Democratic front-runners have previously accepted donations from senior executives at some of the very companies the writers are striking against." Wynter added: "[Senator Hillary Rodham] Clinton [D-NY], for example, took $4,600 in June from Peter Chirnen, president of the parent company of the Fox Network and Film Studio. That doesn't mean writers will refuse her support." Neither Blitzer nor Wynter explained their suggestion that Democrats are behaving inconsistently in accepting contributions from studio executives and then supporting the writers' strike. Read more

CNN's Moos ridiculed proposed GOP YouTube debate questions, but ignored "diamonds or pearls" question CNN chose for Dem debate
CNN's Jeanne Moos characterized some of the questions submitted by YouTube users for the upcoming CNN/YouTube Republican debate as "stunningly superficial," "shockingly sophomoric," "completely incomprehensible," and "totally irrelevant." But Moos didn't mention the question that concluded CNN's broadcast of the November 15 Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas, in which Sen. Hillary Clinton was asked if she preferred "diamonds or pearls." The person asking the question later wrote that CNN insisted she ask the question instead of a different one about the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.
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CNN pledges no Dem "gotchas" in Republican YouTube debate -- so why did CNN allow partisan "gotchas" in Dem debate?
In a November 21 post to The New York Times' political blog, The Caucus, staff writer Ariel Alexovich purported to give a "sneak peek" at how questions for the November 28 CNN/YouTube Republican presidential candidates debate will be selected. Alexovich wrote that "CNN wants to ensure that ... Wednesday's Republican event is 'a debate of their party,' " and quoted debate executive producer and CNN Washington bureau chief David Bohrman saying, "There are quite a few things you might describe as Democratic 'gotchas,' and we are weeding those out." Alexovich further wrote that, according to Bohrman, questions that "involve asking the candidates to defend their opposition to gay marriage and abortion," which Bohrman called "lobbying grenades," "would be disqualified by the CNN selection team." Yet, CNN gave no indication that it similarly weeded out Republican "gotchas" for the CNN/YouTube Democratic debate; indeed, several questions asked during that debate could be described as Republican "gotchas," including one in which the questioner echoed the enduring Republican myth of Democrats as taxers and spenders: "I'd like to know, if the Democrats come into office, are my taxes going to rise like usually they do when a Democrat gets into office?" CNN also aired two separate questions on same-sex marriage. Read more

CNN's King reported that Giuliani "supports the constitutional right" to abortion without noting that he said "[i]t would be OK to repeal" Roe v. Wade
During a report on the Republican presidential candidates' views on abortion rights, on the November 26 edition of CNN's The Situation Room, CNN chief national correspondent John King stated that as "a mayoral candidate in 1989 [former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani] promised to uphold the constitutional right to an abortion" without mentioning that Giuliani reportedly shifted his position on the abortion issue during the course of his 1989 mayoral campaign, as Media Matters for America has previously documented. Further, at the conclusion of King's report, Situation Room anchor Wolf Blitzer asked King, "[T]he bottom line, John, is he supports abortion rights for women, is that right?" to which King responded, "He does." King went on to assert that Giuliani "says that he supports the constitutional right for a woman to choose an abortion ... he does believe there is that constitutional right." But neither King nor Blitzer reported that Giuliani said during the May 3 Republican presidential debate that "[i]t would be OK to repeal" Roe v. Wade -- the 1973 Supreme Court decision finding that the Constitution protects a women's right to an abortion. Further, neither King nor Blitzer noted -- as Media Matters has repeatedly documented -- that Giuliani has said on several occasions that if elected president, he would appoint "strict constructionist" judges and has specifically "pledge[d] to use ... as model appointments" Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, both of whom have declared their support for overturning Roe. Read more

Propaganda/Noise Machine

Santorum opened first Inquirer column with falsehood
Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) began his November 8 Philadelphia Inquirer column -- his first as an Inquirer columnist -- by writing: " 'Odd.' It is, indeed, odd to write a column every other Thursday for a paper that used that very word to describe me." Santorum continued: "Actually, odd was one of the nicer terms used in The Inquirer to describe me. Imagine these words next to your name in your high school yearbook -- disingenuous, snake oil peddler, smug, arrogant, chicken-livered, intolerant and fatalistic. And most of those labels were in news stories." In fact, a Nexis search revealed only two instances in which an Inquirer reporter used any of those words in a news article to describe Santorum -- one 1994 article referred to then-Senate candidate Santorum's protest to his opponent's campaign ad as "somewhat disingenuous," and a 2006 article reported that Santorum "alternated between hopeful and fatalistic" during the last week of his unsuccessful bid for re-election. Several of the other "labels" Santorum highlighted -- "snake oil peddler," "chicken-livered," "intolerant," and "odd" -- appeared either in columns or editorials. The remaining descriptors -- "smug" and "arrogant" -- appeared in news articles but were in quotation marks and were attributed to critics of Santorum. Read more

On Tucker, Bob Franken resurrected false stories about childhoods of Bush, Gore
On the November 26 edition of MSNBC's Tucker, former CNN correspondent Bob Franken described President Bush and former Vice President Al Gore as being "as different as night and day" because "Bush was raised in the oil patch in Texas" while Gore "was raised in a hotel in Washington and went to St. Albans, a very, very chichi private school." In contrasting the childhood experiences of Bush and Gore, Franken misled MSNBC viewers about both men, resurrecting false storylines that were common in media coverage of the 2000 presidential campaign. Read more

Stem Cell Research

Contrary to researchers' views, Hume touted stem-cell breakthrough as "virtually eliminat[ing]" debate
On Fox News Sunday, Brit Hume and Bill Kristol asserted that the recent announcement that scientists have reprogrammed adult stem cells to apparently behave like embryonic stem cells would end the debate over embryonic stem cell research. But none of the panelists mentioned that several scientists, including one of the lead researchers, have said that the reprogramming does not end the need for embryonic stem-cell research. Read more

Economic Issues

O'Reilly accused NY Times of "rooting for a recession"
Bill O'Reilly accused The New York Times of "rooting for a recession," citing a Times article reporting on both the possible positive and negative effects of a recession. But O'Reilly did not note an article in The Wall Street Journal -- owned by Fox News' parent company, News Corp. -- with the headline "Recession Fears Weigh Heavily on the Markets," nor did he mention that FoxNews.com columnist Susan Walker penned a column headlined "5 Reasons Why We Are Closer to a Recession." Read more

National Security/Foreign Policy

Buchanan: "America [is] committing suicide" while "Asian, African, and Latin American children come to inherit the estate"
MSNBC political analyst Pat Buchanan appeared on the November 26 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes to discuss his new book, Day of Reckoning: How Hubris, Ideology, And Greed Are Tearing America Apart (Thomas Dunne Books, November 2007), in which he writes that America is "on a path to national suicide" and later asks: "How is America committing suicide?" answering: "Every way a nation can." He proceeds to claim that "[t]he American majority is not reproducing itself. ... Forty-five million of its young have been destroyed in the womb since Roe v. Wade, as Asian, African, and Latin American children come to inherit the estate the lost generation of American children never got to see." On Hannity & Colmes, Buchanan asserted: "You've got a wholesale invasion, the greatest invasion in human history, coming across your southern border, changing the composition and character of your country. You've got the melting pot that once welded us all together, which has broken down." Co-host Sean Hannity went on to ask him: "Do you really believe that America, the country we all love as we know it, is in jeopardy of existing?" Buchanan responded: "I think America may exist, but I'll tell you this: I do believe we're going to lose the American Southwest. I think it is almost inevitable." He continued: "If we do not put a fence on that border ...you're going to have 100 million Hispanics in the country, most of them new immigrants from Mexico, which believes that belongs to them. What's going to happen to us, Sean, in my judgment, is what is happening right now: We are Balkanizing. We are dividing and separating from one another politically, morally -- on issues like abortion or Terri Schiavo -- racially and ethnically when you get Jena and then you get Don Imus, and all of these things ripping us apart. All the things that used to pull us together and hold us together no longer do." Read more

Global Warming

Carlson: If Al Gore were president, "[w]e'd ... be living in yurts in the dark"
On the November 26 edition of MSNBC's Tucker, after stating that he "will bet [his] car" that President Bush, "when he leaves office will come out in the next decade or so as a strong advocate on behalf of ending global warming," host Tucker Carlson asserted that former Vice President Al Gore "would have been a disaster as president." Carlson continued: "We'd have been living in the Dark Ages. I think he's fundamentally hostile to human civilization. And a phony." After Politico senior political columnist Roger Simon asked Carlson, "Would we be fighting a war in Iraq?" Carlson responded, "We would likely be not, not be fighting a war in Iraq. We'd also be living in yurts in the dark, and that would be maybe almost as bad." Read more

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